All this was taking place at the time when Jan Rubens was doing a little thinking on his own account.  On reading the history of Europe, Flanders seems to one to have been a battle-ground from the dawn of history up to the night of June Eighteenth, Eighteen Hundred Fifteen, with a few incidental skirmishes since, for it is difficult to stop short.  And it surely was meet that Napoleon should have gone up there to receive his Waterloo, and charge his cavalry into a sunken roadway, making a bridge across with a mingled mass of men and horses; upon which site now is a huge mound thrown up by the English, surmounted by a gigantic bronze lion cast from the captured cannon of the French.

Napoleon belonged to the Latin race:  he pushed his rule north into Flanders, and there his prowess ended—­there at the same place where Spanish rule had been throttled and turned back upon itself.  “Thus far, and no farther.”  Jan Rubens was right.  But he paid dearly for his prophecy.

When William the Silent was away on his many warfaring expeditions, the man who had charge of certain of his affairs was Jan Rubens.  Naturally this brought Rubens into an acquaintanceship with the wife of the silent prince.  Rubens was a handsome man, ready in speech, and of the kind that makes friends easily.  And if the wife of the Prince of Orange liked the vivacious Rubens better than the silent warrior (who won his sobriquet, they do say, through density of emotion and lack of ideas), why, who can blame her!

But Rubens had a wife of his own, to whom he was fondly attached; and this wife was also the close and trusted friend of the woman whose husband was off to the wars.  And yet when this dense and silent man came back from one of his expeditions, it was only publicly to affront and disgrace his wife, and to cast Jan Rubens into a dungeon.  No doubt the Prince was jealous of the courtly Rubens—­and the Iagos are a numerous tribe.  But Othello’s limit had been reached.  He damned the innocent woman to the lowest pit, and visited his wrath on the man.

Of course I know full well that all Northern Europe once rang with shrill gossip over the affair, and as usual the woman was declared the guilty party.  Even yet, when topics for scandal in Belgium run short, this old tale is revived and gone over—­sides being taken.  I’ve gone over it, too, and although I may be in the minority, just as I possibly am as to the “guilt” of Eve, yet I stand firm on the side of the woman.  I give the facts just as they appear, having canvassed the whole subject, possibly a little more than was good for me.

Republics may be ungrateful, but the favor of princes is fickle as the East Wind.

We make a fine hullabaloo nowadays because France or Russia occasionally tries and sentences a man without giving him an opportunity of defense; but in the Sixteenth Century the donjon-keeps of hundreds of castles in Europe were filled with prisoners whose offense consisted in being feared or disliked by some whimsical local ruler.