ment. She listened so intently that her head began to ache again,
but could hear only separate words and those very indistinctly. Had the
city been surrendered to the Spaniards, had King Philip's soldiers found
quarters in the burgomaster's house? Her blood boiled indignantly, when
she thought of the Castilians' triumph and the humiliation of her native
land, but soon her former joyous excitement again filled her mind, as she
beheld in imagination art re-enter the bare walls of the Leyden churches,
now robbed of all their ornaments, chanting processions move through the
streets, and priests in rich robes celebrating mass in the
newly-decorated tabernacles, amid beautiful music, the odor of incense,
and the ringing of bells. She expected to receive from the Spaniards a
place where she could pray and free her soul by confession. Amid her
former surroundings nothing had afforded her any support, except her
religion. A worthy priest, who was also her instructor, had zealously
striven to prove to her, that the new religion threatened to destroy the
mystical consecration of life, the yearning for the beautiful, every
ideal emotion of the human soul, and with them art also; so Henrica
preferred to see her native land Spanish and Catholic, rather than free
from the foreigners whom she hated and Calvinistical.

The court-yard gradually became less noisy, but when the first rays of
morning light streamed into her windows, the bustle again commenced and
grew louder. Heavy soles tramped upon the pavement, and amid the voices
that now mingled with those she had formerly heard, she fancied she
distinguished Maria's and Barbara's. Yes, she was not mistaken. That cry
of terror must proceed from her friend's mouth, and was followed by
exclamations of grief from bearded lips and loud sobs.

Evil tidings must have reached her host's house, and the woman weeping so
impetuously below was probably kind "Babetta."

Anxiety drove her from her bed. On the little table beside it, amid
several bottles and glasses, the lamp and the box of matches, stood the
tiny bell, at whose faint sound one of her nurses invariably hastened in.
Henrica rang it three times, then again and again, but nobody appeared.
Then her hot blood boiled, and half from impatience and vexation, half
from curiosity and sympathy, she slipped into her shoes, threw on a
morning dress, went to the chair which stood on the platform in the
niche, opened the window, and looked down a