This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of thefile for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making anentire meal of them. D.W.]
By Georg Ebers
Translated from the German by Mary J. Safford
BARONESS SOPHIE VON BRANDENSTEIN, nee EBERS.
My reason for dedicating a book, and particularly this book, to you, theonly sister of my dead father, needs no word of explanation between us.From early childhood you have been a dear and faithful friend to me, andcertainly have not forgotten how industriously I labored, while yourguest seventeen years ago, in arranging the material which constitutesthe foundation of the "Burgomaster's Wife." You then took a friendlyinterest in many a note of facts, that had seemed to me extraordinary,admirable, or amusing, and when the claims of an arduous professionprevented me from pursuing my favorite occupation of studying the historyof Holland, my mother's home, in the old way, never wearied of remindingme of the fallow material, that had previously awakened your sympathy.
At last I have been permitted to give the matter so long laid aside itsjust dues. A beautiful portion of Holland's glorious history affords theespalier, around which the tendrils of my narrative entwine. You havewatched them grow, and therefore will view them kindly and indulgently.
In love and friendship,
Ever the same,
Leipsic, Oct. 30th, 1881.
In the year 1574 A. D. spring made its joyous entry into the Netherlandsat an unusually early date.
The sky was blue, gnats sported in the sunshine, white butterfliesalighted on the newly-opened yellow flowers, and beside one of thenumerous ditches intersecting the wide plain stood a stork, snapping at afine frog; the poor fellow soon writhed in its enemy's red beak. Onegulp—the merry jumper vanished, and its murderer, flapping its wings,soared high into the air. On flew the bird over gardens filled withblossoming fruit-trees, trimly laid-out flower-beds, and gaily-paintedarbors, across the frowning circlet of walls and towers that girdled thecity, over narrow houses with high, pointed gables, and neat streetsbordered with elm, poplar, linden and willow-trees, decked with the firstgreen leaves of spring. At last it alighted on a lofty gable-roof, onwhose ridge was its firmly-fastened nest. After generously giving up itsprey to the little wife brooding over the eggs, it stood on one leg andgazed thoughtfully down upon the city, whose shining red tiles gleamedspick and span from the green velvet carpet of the meadows. The bird hadknown beautiful Leyden, the gem of Holland, for many a year, and wasfamiliar with all the branches of the Rhine that divided the stately cityinto numerous islands, and over which arched as many stone bridges asthere are days in five months of the year; but surely many changes hadoccurred here since the stork's last departure for the south.
Where were the citizens' gay summer-houses and orchards, where the woodenframes on which the weavers used to stretch their dark and coloredcloths?
Whatever plant or work of human hands had risen, outside the city wallsand towers to the height of a man's breast, thu