y, if you wish to know what life really
is, for as to toiling from morn to evening on a wooden stool, or a
leathern chair, in a counting-house or a laboratory, that certainly is
not living. Your time to die will also come; and if you are not then so
fortunate as to have a son, you will let my name grow extinct, and my
guilders, which no one has ever fingered but my father, myself, and
the coiner, will have the surprise of passing to an unknown master. And
least of all, imitate the example of your godfather, Cornelius de Witt,
who has plunged into politics, the most ungrateful of all careers, and
who will certainly come to an untimely end."

Having given utterance to this paternal advice, the worthy Mynheer van
Baerle died, to the intense grief of his son Cornelius, who cared very
little for the guilders, and very much for his father.

Cornelius then remained alone in his large house. In vain his godfather
offered to him a place in the public service,--in vain did he try
to give him a taste for glory,--although Cornelius, to gratify his
godfather, did embark with De Ruyter upon "The Seven Provinces," the
flagship of a fleet of one hundred and thirty-nine sail, with which
the famous admiral set out to contend singlehanded against the combined
forces of France and England. When, guided by the pilot Leger, he had
come within musket-shot of the "Prince," with the Duke of York (the
English king's brother) aboard, upon which De Ruyter, his mentor, made
so sharp and well directed an attack that the Duke, perceiving that his
vessel would soon have to strike, made the best of his way aboard the
"Saint Michael"; when he had seen the "Saint Michael," riddled and
shattered by the Dutch broadside, drift out of the line; when he had
witnessed the sinking of the "Earl of Sandwich," and the death by fire
or drowning of four hundred sailors; when he realized that the result of
all this destruction--after twenty ships had been blown to pieces, three
thousand men killed and five thousand injured--was that nothing was
decided, that both sides claimed the victory, that the fighting would
soon begin again, and that just one more name, that of Southwold Bay,
had been added to the list of battles; when he had estimated how much
time is lost simply in shutting his eyes and ears by a man who likes
to use his reflective powers even while his fellow creatures are
cannonading one another;--Cornelius bade farewell to De Ruyter, to the
Ruart de Pulte