Whether originally of a timid temperament or not, he was certainly possessed of perfect courage at last.  In siege and battle—­in the deadly air of pestilential cities—­in the long exhaustion of mind and body which comes from unduly protracted labor and anxiety—­amid the countless conspiracies of assassins—­he was daily exposed to death in every shape.  Within two years, five different attempts against his life had been discovered.  Rank and fortune were offered to any malefactor who would compass the murder.  He had already been shot through the head, and almost mortally wounded.  Under such circumstances even a brave man might have seen a pitfall at every step, a dagger in every hand, and poison in every cup.  On the contrary, he was ever cheerful, and hardly took more precaution than usual.  “God in his mercy,” said he, with unaffected simplicity, “will maintain my innocence and my honor during my life and in future ages.  As to my fortune and my life, I have dedicated both, long since, to His service.  He will do therewith what pleases Him for His glory and my salvation.”  Thus his suspicions were not even excited by the ominous face of Gerard, when he first presented himself at the dining-room door.  The Prince laughed off his wife’s prophetic apprehension at the sight of his murderer, and was as cheerful as usual to the last.

He possessed, too, that which to the heathen philosopher seemed the greatest good—­the sound mind in the sound body.  His physical frame was after death found so perfect that a long life might have been in store for him, notwithstanding all which he had endured.  The desperate illness of 1574, the frightful gunshot wound inflicted by Jaureguy in 1582, had left no traces.  The physicians pronounced that his body presented an aspect of perfect health.  His temperament was cheerful.  At table, the pleasures of which, in moderation, were his only relaxation, he was always animated and merry, and this jocoseness was partly natural, partly intentional.  In the darkest hours of his country’s trial, he affected a serenity which he was far from feeling, so that his apparent gaiety at momentous epochs was even censured by dullards, who could not comprehend its philosophy, nor applaud the flippancy of William the Silent.

He went through life bearing the load of a people’s sorrows upon his shoulders with a smiling face.  Their name was the last word upon his lips, save the simple affirmative, with which the soldier who had been battling for the right all his lifetime, commended his soul in dying “to his great captain, Christ.”  The people were grateful and affectionate, for they trusted the character of their “Father William,” and not all the clouds which calumny could collect ever dimmed to their eyes the radiance of that lofty mind to which they were accustomed, in their darkest calamities, to look for light.  As long as he lived, he was the guiding-star of a whole brave nation, and when he died the little children cried in the streets.