“Fistula dulce canit volucrem dum decipit auceps.”

   ["Sweet are the notes of the flute, when the fowler lures the bird
   to his nest.”]

CHAPTER XXVII.

The first week in June and half the second had passed, the beautiful sunny days had drawn to a close, and numerous guests sought the “Angulus” in Aquarius’s tavern during the evening hours.  It was so cosy there when the sea-breeze whistled, the rain poured, and the water fell plashing on the pavements.  The Spanish besieging army encompassed the city like an iron wall.  Each individual felt that he was a fellow-prisoner of his neighbor, and drew closer to companions of his own rank and opinions.  Business was stagnant, idleness and anxiety weighed like lead on the minds of all, and whoever wished to make time pass rapidly and relieve his oppressed soul, went to the tavern to give utterance to his own hopes and fears, and hear what others were thinking and feeling in the common distress.

All the tables in the Angulus were occupied, and whoever wanted to be understood by a distant neighbor was forced to raise his voice very loud, for special conversations were being carried on at every table.  Here, there, and everywhere, people were shouting to the busy bar-maid, glasses clinked together, and pewter lids fell on the tops of hard stone-ware jugs.

The talk at a round table in the end of the long room was louder than anywhere else.  Six officers had seated themselves at it, among them Georg von Dornburg.  Captain Van der Laen, his superior officer, whose past career had been a truly heroic one, was loudly relating in his deep voice, strange and amusing tales of his travels by sea and land, Colonel Mulder often interrupted him, and at every somewhat incredible story, smilingly told a similar, but perfectly impossible adventure of his own.  Captain Van Duivenvoorde soothingly interposed, when Van der Laen, who was conscious of never deviating far from the truth, angrily repelled the old man’s jesting insinuations.  Captain Cromwell, a grave man with a round head and smooth long hair, who had come to Holland to fight for the faith, rarely mingled in the conversation, and then only with a few words of scarcely intelligible Dutch.  Georg, leaning far back in his chair, stretched his feet out before him and stared silently into vacancy.

Herr Aquanus, the host, walked from one table to another, and when he at last reached the one where the officers sat, paused opposite to the Thuringian, saying: 

“Where are your thoughts, Junker?  One would scarcely know you during the last few days.  What has come over you?”

Georg hastily sat erect, stretched himself like a person roused from sleep, and answered pleasantly: 

“Dreams come in idleness.”

“The cage is getting too narrow for him,” said Captain Van der Laen.  “If this state of things lasts long, we shall all get dizzy like the sheep.”