sness increased
every moment. 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