Clara.  Could I help crying out?  It was the battle of Gravelines, and I found in the picture the letter C. and then looked for it in the description below.  There it stood, “Count Egmont, with his horse shot under him.”  I shuddered, and afterwards I could not help laughing at the woodcut figure of Egmont, as tall as the neighbouring tower of Gravelines, and the English ships at the side.—­When I remember how I used to conceive of a battle, and what an idea I had, as a girl, of Count Egmont; when I listened to descriptions of him, and of all the other earls and princes; —­and think how it is with me now!

[Enter Brackenburg.

Clara.  Well, what is going on?

Brackenburg.  Nothing certain is known.  It is rumoured that an insurrection has lately broken out in Flanders; the Regent is afraid of its spreading here.  The castle is strongly garrisoned, the burghers are crowding to the gates, and the streets are thronged with people.  I will hasten at once to my old father. (As if about to go.)

Clara.  Shall we see you to-morrow?  I must change my dress a little.  I am expecting my cousin, and I look too untidy.  Come, Mother, help me a moment.  Take the book, Brackenburg, and bring me such another story.

Mother.  Farewell.

Brackenburg (extending his hand).  Your hand.

Clara (refusing hers).  When you come next.

[Exeunt Mother and daughter.

Brackenburg (alone).  I had resolved to go away again at once; and yet, when she takes me at my word, and lets me leave her, I feel as if I could go mad,—­Wretched man!  Does the fate of thy fatherland, does the growing disturbance fail to move thee?—­Are countryman and Spaniard the same to thee? and carest thou not who rules, and who is in the right?  I wad a different sort of fellow as a schoolboy! —­Then, when an exercise in oratory was given; “Brutus’ Speech for Liberty,” for instance, Fritz was ever the first, and the rector would say:  “If it were only spoken more deliberately, the words not all huddled together.”—­Then my blood boiled, and longed for action.—­Now I drag along, bound by the eyes of a maiden.  I cannot leave her! yet she, alas, cannot love me!—­ah—­no—–­she—­she cannot have entirely rejected me—­not entirely—­yet half love is no love!—­I will endure it no longer!—­Can it be true what a friend lately whispered in my ear, that she secretly admits a man into the house by night, when she always sends me away modestly before evening?  No, it cannot be true!  It is a lie!  A base, slanderous lie!  Clara is as innocent as I am wretched.—­She has rejected me, has thrust me from her heart—­and shall I live on thus?  I cannot, I will not endure it.  Already my native land is convulsed by internal strife, and do I perish abjectly amid the tumult?  I will not endure it!  When the trumpet sounds, when a shot falls, it thrills through my bone and marrow!  But, alas, it does not rouse me!  It does not summon me to join the onslaught, to rescue,