e
thundering in the sea outside, the great merchant princes used to sit
round the republican council-board, was to be exhibited that day, for
the first time, the new picture of the young Dutch hero, Van Spyck, who
blew up his ship in the war of 1830 against Belgium.

Salve and Elizabeth joined the stream, and even caught some of the
national enthusiasm prevailing in the crowd that was swaying backwards
and forwards in the courtyard, where a band was playing the stirring
national air, "Wien Neerlands bloed door de aders vloeit."

At last they found themselves before the canvas. It represented the
young cadet of seventeen years on the gunboat at the supreme moment.

Elizabeth stood with her hands clasped before her silently engrossed,
while Salve kept her from being pressed upon behind.

"Look!" she said, turning half round to him, but without taking her eyes
off the picture,--"the Belgian captain is inviting him to surrender. He
has no choice--they are too many for him. But don't you see the thought
he has in his mind?--you can read it in his face. And what a fine
fellow he looks, with his handsome uniform, and his epaulets, and his
short sword!" she said, in a lower tone, with a revival of her old
childish enthusiasm for that kind of show.

Her last words were like a dagger's thrust to Salve. She still had a
hankering, then, for all this, and he stood behind her pale with
suppressed feeling, while she continued to gaze at the picture and think
aloud to him.

"Poor, handsome lad! But he never will surrender--one can easily see
that; and so he must go down," she said, in a subdued voice,
involuntarily folding her hands, as if in fancy she went with him; "and
he blows up Belgian and all into the air, Salve," she said, turning to
him with a fine spirited look in her face, and with moistened eyes.

He made no reply; and supposing that, like herself, he was lost in the
scene before them, she turned again to the picture. But while, after
giving vent to her feelings, she stood there with a smile on her face,
thinking that she knew one who would have been quite as capable as Van
Spyck of such an exploit--the man, namely, who was then standing behind
her--to him the picture had become a hateful thing; and he could have
shot Van Spyck through the heart for his uniform's sake.

The whole of the way home he was silent and serious, and it was not
until late in the afternoon that he at all recovered his spirits.

As this was