Mademoiselle Plouernel listened in silence to this conversation, and seeing both her aunt and the Abbot turn pale, even tremble and exchange frightened looks, the young girl said to them with bitter irony: "What else do you expect? We are not here at the court of Versailles! Here the perjury, the iniquity, the deeds of violence of your master appear in their true and horrible colors. Who knows but this very day the deserved execration, inspired by 'Louis the Great' for himself, may cost us our lives! Oh! Thank God, it is only with joy that I would at this hour leave this world, to reunite myself with my mother!"
Mademoiselle Plouernel owed to her mother her virile hatred of wrong, her independent spirit, her opinions so wholly at variance with those that prevailed at court. To her mother also she owed her firm faith in immortality, the faith of our own Gallic forefathers. Brought up in the Reformed religion, Madam Plouernel was forced to embrace Catholicism when still quite young, and yielding to the importunities of her father and mother, she espoused the Count of Plouernel. At the bottom of her heart, however, she preserved, her abjuration notwithstanding, that "Huguenot leaven," the generous ferment of which imparts to the character sooner or later a spirit of independence, and of free inquiry. Madam Plouernel's marriage was far from being a happy one. After she presented two sons to her husband, he, feeling certain of the continuance of his stock, ceased to pay any regard to his wife. Intent upon indulging his scandalous amours, he left her in Brittany in the Castle of Plouernel, where she was thenceforth to live in absolute seclusion, with no other care or happiness than the education of her youngest child Bertha.
The Countess had a brother, who was tenderly devoted to her. Bold and of an adventurous disposition, he devoted himself to the navy. When still a young man he commanded a royal frigate. Having remained a Huguenot, like his admiral, Duquesne, he detested the despotism of Louis XIV, and never made his appearance at court. Dearly loving his sister, and well acquainted with the immoral character of the Count of Plouernel, he sought, though in vain, to dissuade his family from a marriage the sad consequences of which he clearly foresaw, and he embarked upon a long and distant cruise. Kept far away from France by a variety of events, he learned, upon his return home, of the sort of exile that his sister was doomed to, and of the excesses of her husband. Sorrow and indignation carried away the impetuous mariner. He proceeded to Versailles, and there, in a crowded gallery, in plain view of all the courtiers, he stepped straight toward the Count of Plouernel, overwhelmed him with bitter reproaches, and forgot himself to the point of exclaiming: "Monsieur, the infamous cynicism of your conduct and your shameless acts of adultery are an outrage to my sister and a flattery to your master!" This allusion to the amours of Louis XIV was speedily carried to the despot's ears. He flew into a violent rage, and that same day the Count of Plouernel's brother-in-law was taken to the Bastille and thrown into one of its unhealthiest dungeons, where he was left to languish for the space of two years, at the end of which he died. Her brother's imprisonment and death afflicted Madam Plouernel profoundly, and steeped her heart in irreconcilable detestation for Louis XIV. This fresh sorrow increased her domestic infelicity. She divided her time between Bertha's education, study and reading. The library of the castle, established a generation before by Colonel Plouernel, consisted in part of works imbued with the spirit of the political and religious independence of the Reformation. The Countess nourished her mind with the virile substance of those writings. Her favorite books were those which breathed the strictness of morals, the loftiness of thought, the inflexible love of justice, the austerity of honesty that the avowed enemies of the Huguenots themselves give them credit for. Among the books collected by Colonel Plouernel she found an admirable treatise on the druid creed and traditions, "thanks to which the Gauls were freed from the evil of death," inasmuch as they looked upon death as the signal for a complete re-birth towards which the soul winged its way radiant and reclad in a fresh garb. This faith in the immortality of our being, in spirit and matter, the passionate curiosity kindled by the thought of incessant migrations through unknown and mysterious worlds, in short, that creed, so consoling to hearts that are crushed under the weight of present sorrows, soon became the faith of Madam Plouernel, and imparted a powerful impulse to the development of her noble qualities. Brought up in almost complete seclusion by a mother who adored her, and in whom she, in turn, reposed absolute faith, Bertha of Plouernel could not choose but imbibe the maternal convictions and opinions. In what concerned the recent ignoble action of her own family, Bertha's sentiments flowed also from the philosophy of her training. Her aunt and Abbot Boujaron, thrown into consternation by the tidings brought to them by Monsieur Tilly with regard to the popular indignation in The Hague against Louis XIV and the French, remained a prey to distressing apprehensions, while Monsieur Serdan hastened away to the residence of John De Witt, the Grand Pensionary of Holland.
CHAPTER V.
JOHN DE WITT
Cornelius and John De Witt were the sons of Jacob De Witt, a citizen illustrious by his patriotism and his learning, and formerly one of the principal leaders of the Lowenstein party. That party, representing as it did the republican traditions of the Low Countries, as contrasted with the military spirit, tended above all to promote the maritime preponderance that the confederation of the United Provinces was entitled to enjoy by reason of her geographic position and the mercantile genius of her population. Accordingly, the Lowenstein party had, for half a century, been opposing the influence of the Orangemen, partisans of the military and hereditary principle of government represented by the Princes of Orange. The hereditary Stadtholdership, coupled with the functions of captain general of the military and naval forces, was in reality a sort of royalty, qualified, it is true, yet dangerous to the people's liberty. Accordingly, the Lowenstein party caused the States General to enact a decree which disqualified the Princes of the house of Orange from holding the Stadtholdership and at the same time the supreme command of the military and naval forces, and provided, furthermore, that the said offices were not to be hereditary. Cornelius De Witt, the elder of the two brothers, was born at Dortrecht in 1623, and, at the age of twenty-three was elected a deputy of his city and ruart (inspector general of the dikes) in the district of Putten – an office of great importance in that country where the dikes protect agriculture, and may, at a critical moment, become an important means of defense by being broken down – a redoubtable piece of strategy in the event of a foreign invasion. Cornelius De Witt, a man of antique virtues, and, like his brother, endowed with wide attainments, did not confine himself to affairs of state. Having since earliest boyhood applied his mind to nautical science and become a skilled mariner, he contributed powerfully with his advice during the present war to the successful attack made by the fleet of Holland upon the English port of Chatham, a victory that was at once disastrous and shameful to the British navy. Finally, on the occasion of the naval battle delivered this very year to the British and French fleets by Admiral Ruyter in the roadstead of Solway, Cornelius De Witt, seated in his capacity of commissioner of the admiralty of the Republic, in an ivory chair at the most perilous post, the rear castle of the admiral's ship, faced with heroic calmness the murderous fire poured upon him by the enemy, and thus witnessed impassibly the glorious combat, the plan for which he laid down in concert with Ruyter.
John De Witt, his brother's junior by over two years, excelled Cornelius as a statesman, and equalled him in civic virtues and courage. Elected about 1662 Pensionary of Holland, or the executive agent of the Republic, and thus placed at the head of the government, John De Witt's love for his country assumed a religious character. He looked upon his office as a ministry. Inaccessible by the natural loftiness of his nature to the intoxicating allurements of power, that great man's simplicity and modesty never were belied by his acts; neither did ever his respect for justice, for duty and for pledged faith falter before the pretext of 'necessities of state.' Charged with the diplomatic relations of the United Provinces, he balked the snares, the perfidies and the underground manoeuvres of the foreign ambassadors by the mere rectitude of his character and the penetration of his judgment. One instance among many, in this great citizen's life, may suffice to depict him. He inspired such confidence even in his adversaries, that the Princess of Orange entrusted to him the direction of her son's education, aware though she was of John De Witt's hostility to the hereditary Stadtholdership in the house of Orange. The only descendant of that family, destined to become the head of the Orangemen's party, was thus entrusted by the most enlightened of mothers to the care of John De Witt. He watched over the child with paternal solicitude, endeavoring