lliam the Silent, the grandson of Maurice of Saxony,
whom he resembled in visage and character, he was summoned by every drop
of blood in his veins to do life-long battle with the spirit of Spanish
absolutism, and he was already girding himself for his life's work. He
assumed at once for his device a fallen oak, with a young sapling
springing from its root. His motto, "Tandem fit surculus arbor," "the
twig shall yet become a tree"--was to be nobly justified by his career.

The remaining son, then a six months' child, was also destined to high
fortunes, and to win an enduring name in his country's history. For the
present he remained with his mother, the noble Louisa de Coligny, who had
thus seen, at long intervals, her father and two husbands fall victims to
the Spanish policy; for it is as certain that Philip knew beforehand, and
testified his approbation of, the massacre of St. Bartholomew, as that he
was the murderer of Orange.

The Estates of Holland implored the widowed Princess to remain in their
territority, settling a liberal allowance upon herself and her child, and
she fixed her residence at Leyden.

But her position was most melancholy. Married in youth to the Seigneur de
Teligny, a young noble of distinguished qualities, she had soon become
both a widow and an orphan in the dread night of St. Bartholomew. She had
made her own escape to Switzerland; and ten years afterwards she had
united herself in marriage with the Prince of Orange. At the age of
thirty-two, she now found herself desolate and wretched in a foreign
land, where she had never felt thoroughly at home. The widow and children
of William the Silent were almost without the necessaries of life. "I
hardly know," wrote the Princess to her brother-in-law, Count John, "how
the children and I are to maintain ourselves according to the honour of
the house. May God provide for us in his bounty, and certainly we have
much need of it." Accustomed to the more luxurious civilisation of
France, she had been amused rather than annoyed, when, on her first
arrival in Holland for her nuptials, she found herself making the journey
from Rotterdam to Delft in an open cart without springs, instead of the
well-balanced coaches to which she had been used, arriving, as might have
been expected, "much bruised and shaken." Such had become the primitive
simplicity of William the Silent's household. But on his death, in
embarrassed circumstances, it was still more straighten