. The Frenchman was liberated
with this understanding; but being very much the friend of Orange,
straightway told him the whole story, and remained ever afterwards a
faithful servant of the states. It is to be presumed that he excused the
treachery to which he owed his escape from prison on the ground that
faith was no more to be kept with murderers than with heretics. Thus
within two years there had been five distinct attempts to assassinate the
Prince, all of them, with the privity of the Spanish government. A sixth
was soon to follow.

In the summer of 1584, William of Orange was residing at Delft, where his
wife, Louisa de Coligny, had given birth, in the preceding winter, to a
son, afterwards the celebrated stadholder, Frederic Henry. The child had
received these names from his two godfathers, the Kings of Denmark and of
Navarre, and his baptism had been celebrated with much rejoicing on the
12th of June, in the place of his birth.

It was a quiet, cheerful, yet somewhat drowsy little city, that ancient
burgh of Delft. The placid canals by which it was intersected in every
direction were all planted with whispering, umbrageous rows of limes and
poplars, and along these watery highways the traffic of the place glided
so noiselessly that the town seemed the abode of silence and
tranquillity. The streets were clean and airy, the houses well built, the
whole aspect of the place thriving.

One of the principal thoroughfares was called the old Delftstreet. It was
shaded on both sides by lime trees, which in that midsummer season
covered the surface of the canal which flowed between them with their
light and fragrant blossoms. On one side of this street was the "old
kirk," a plain, antique structure of brick, with lancet windows, and with
a tall, slender tower, which inclined, at a very considerable angle,
towards a house upon the other side of the canal. That house was the
mansion of William the Silent. It stood directly opposite the church,
being separated by a spacious courtyard from the street, while the
stables and other offices in the rear extended to the city wall. A narrow
lane, opening out of Delft-street, ran along the side of the house and
court, in the direction of the ramparts. The house was a plain,
two-storied edifice of brick, with red-tiled roof, and had formerly been
a cloister dedicated to Saint Agatha, the last prior of which had been
hanged by the furious Lumey de la Merck.

The news of Anjou's de