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In her terror, she sent word at once to the Princess Maximilienne, sister of the Duke William, who sent at once to the invalid her own physician, the doctor Mermann. Thanks to his care, the health of Orland improved, but his reason did not return. From that moment he became sad, dreamy, absorbed in melancholy.
Then Aggie walked away, followed by the girls, each one trying to appear as if perfectly indifferent whether any of the boys came to the party; but all thinking that it would be a very tame affair if no one but Winny was present. On this particular year there had been but little to amuse the school children of Orland; therefore the girls, if not the boys, had hailed Aggie's scheme with delight.
She died June 5, 1600, and on her tomb she is named, "la noble et vertueuse dame Regina de Lassin, veuve de feu Orland de Lassus." She had been a good wife to a good husband. The sadness of her latter years with her beloved and demented husband reminds one of the pathetic fate of Robert Schumann and his wife.
But he was born in either 1520 or 1530 at Mons in Hainault, and, according to the old Annales du Hainault, he changed his name from Roland de Lattre to Orland di Lassus because his father had been convicted of making spurious coin and, as a "false moneyer," had to wear a string of his evil utterances round his neck.
WHEN Deacon Littlefield dismissed the pupils of the one school in the little town of Orland, on a certain day in December some years ago, he was at a decided loss to understand what caused such an excitement among them before they had walked the short length of the playground.
In fact, Orland in his condition of semi-insanity threatened to resign, and when the insulted Duke Maximilian showed signs of accepting the resignation, it was the wife that saved the family from disgrace and poverty. He was left undisturbed in his post, but, before long, death forced the acceptance of his resignation.
But I hear now from Lord Orland that there are many bad reports of him. He was the chief witness against that rogue, Lord Dunoran, who swallowed poison in Newgate, and, they say, leaned hard against him, although he won much money of him, and swore with a blood-thirsty intention.
A contemporary of the Rizzio, so humble as a musician and so soaring in his intrigues, was the great Roland de Lattre, better known as Orland di Lassus or Orlandus Lassus, the "Belgian Orpheus," "le Prince des Musiciens." There is as much dispute over the date of his birth as over the early conditions of his life.
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