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The boy listened with rapture, and presently succumbed to sleep. Clement began to rock his new treasure in his arms, and to crone over him a little lullaby well known in Tergon, with which his own mother had often set him off. He sighed deeply, and could not help thinking what might have been but for a piece of paper with a lie in it.
"Then hear me all. By God and St. Bavon, I swear I will never be a priest while Margaret lives. Since force is to decide it, and not love and duty, try force, father. And the day I see the burgomaster come for me I leave Tergon for ever, and Holland too, and my father's house, where it seems I am valued only for what is to be got out of me."
Swinburne remarked of it that "a story better conceived, better constructed, or better related, it would be difficult to find anywhere." I. Gerard Falls in Love It was past the middle of the fifteenth century when our tale begins. Elias, and Catherine his wife, lived in the little town of Tergon in Holland.
For at Rotterdam, thanks to a letter from Margaret Van Eyck, Gerard won the favour of the Princess Marie, who, hearing that he was to be a priest, promised him a benefice. And yet no sooner was Gerard returned home to Tergon than he must needs go seeking Margaret, who lived alone with her father, old Peter Brandt, at Sevenbergen.
"The good-wife will say, 'Alack, here is Beelzebub a hatching of my eggs." But the time came for parting and Denys, with a letter from Gerard to Margaret Brandt, reached Tergon, and found Eli and Catherine and gave them news of their son. "Many a weary league we trode together," said Denys. "Never were truer comrades; never will be while earth shall last.
Then Gerard took to illuminating on vellum, and in this he was helped by an old lady, Margaret Van Eyck, sister of the famous brothers Van Eyck, who had come to end her days near Tergon. When Philip the Good, Count of Flanders, for the encouragement of the arts, offered prizes for the best specimens of painting on glass and illumination on vellum, Gerard decided to compete.
Gerard escaped from the prison, and vowing he had done with Tergon, bade farewell to Margaret, and set off for Italy. Once across the frontier in Germany he was safe from Ghysbrecht's malice. He also had in his keeping the piece of parchment which gave certain lands to Peter Brandt, and which Ghysbrecht had hitherto held. II. To Rome
This done, he took down his wallet, and brought his tinder-box and an iron flask his careful mother had put in. Ghysbrecht Van Swikten, the burgomaster of Tergon, an old man redolent of wealth, came riding by while Gerard was preparing a meal of soup and bread by the roadside. He reined in his steed and spoke uneasily: "Why, Peter Margaret what mummery is this?"
First I left my route a bit to be with him, then he his to be with me. We talked of Sevenbergen and Tergon a thousand times, and of all in this house. We had our troubles on the road, but battling them together made them light.
Henceforth there was no longer any peace in the little house at Tergon, and at last Eli declared before the whole family that he had ordered the burgomaster to imprison his son Gerard in the Stadthouse rather than let him marry Margaret. Gerard turned pale at this, and his father went on to say, "and a priest you shall be before this year is out, willy-nilly." "Is it so?" cried Gerard.
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