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The burgomaster himself narrowly escaped becoming a prisoner, and owed his safety only to the swiftness of his barge, which was called the "Flying Devil."
At lovely Eisenach we had tarried for days; had entered the door of the once grand house of the burgomaster Cotta, before which little Martin, with the other charity boys of the school near by, had sung Christmas carols for his bread, and where he had been taken to the heart and the home of Mother Ursula; had peeped into the room there that was his, and been driven up the mountain-side beyond the village whose crown is the fine old castle of the Wartburg; had stood at the solitary casement of the room where he fought with the devil, and looked out over the magnificent panorama of wooded mountains and beautiful valley where he looked forth day after day of those ten months of mysterious imprisonment, into which friendly hands had thrust him from the thick of the fight, where he saw the miracle of spring-time creeping over the hills and waving trees far beneath him, and heard and felt the wintry winds howl around his solitude.
"What will formal vows avail?" replied the burgomaster. "Whoever desires liberty, must grant it. Besides, this hour will teach us on whom we can depend." "Not a single man of the militia is absent," said the commissioner. "There is comfort in that. What is stirring yonder in the linden?" The men looked up and perceived Adrian, who was swaying in the top of the tree, as a concealed listener.
Then the burgomaster had undertaken that in the circumstances as they now existed, there should be no provoking difficulties. Herr Molk understood that Linda must give up something on receiving that position of an honest man's wife, which she was now hardly entitled to expect.
From time to time there had been threatening demonstrations made against the burgomaster, who, by protracting the resistance of Antwerp, was bringing about the absolute destruction of a worldwide trade, and the downfall of the most opulent capital in Christendom. There were also many popular riots very easily inflamed by the Catholic portion of the inhabitants for bread.
The surest means of gaining information was to seek that very day a reliable messenger, by whom to send Anna d'Avila money, and if possible bring her to Holland. The burgomaster declared himself ready to advance from his own property, a portion of the legacy bequeathed Henrica's sister by Fraulein Van Hoogstraten, and accepted his guest's thanks without constraint. "But whom could they send?"
"His Highness is in no respects dissatisfied with you, nor prone to conceive any indignation against this poor people." He assured the burgomaster that he was not suspected of lightness, nor of a wish to delay matters, but he expressed solicitude with regard to the threatening demonstrations which had been made against him in Antwerp.
A sharp action had succeeded, in which the burgomaster, not being properly sustained by the Zeeland ships on which he relied, had been defeated.
"I wish particularly to speak to you, now, at once; and this will give you strength to listen to me." But Linda declined to be made strong for such a purpose, and declared that she could listen very well as she was. Then Madame Staubach began her great argument. Linda had heard what the burgomaster had said. Linda knew well what she, her aunt and guardian, thought about it.
Leyden was sublime in its despair. A few murmurs were, however, occasionally heard at the steadfastness of the magistrates, and a dead body was placed at the door of the burgomaster, as a silent witness against his inflexibility. A party of the more faint-hearted even assailed the heroic Adrian Van der Werf with threats and reproaches as he passed through the streets.
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