soared high into the air. On flew the bird over gardens filled with
blossoming fruit-trees, trimly laid-out flower-beds, and gaily-painted
arbors, across the frowning circlet of walls and towers that girdled the
city, over narrow houses with high, pointed gables, and neat streets
bordered with elm, poplar, linden and willow-trees, decked with the first
green leaves of spring. At last it alighted on a lofty gable-roof, on
whose ridge was its firmly-fastened nest. After generously giving up its
prey to the little wife brooding over the eggs, it stood on one leg and
gazed thoughtfully down upon the city, whose shining red tiles gleamed
spick and span from the green velvet carpet of the meadows. The bird had
known beautiful Leyden, the gem of Holland, for many a year, and was
familiar with all the branches of the Rhine that divided the stately city
into numerous islands, and over which arched as many stone bridges as
there are days in five months of the year; but surely many changes had
occurred here since the stork's last departure for the south.

Where were the citizens' gay summer-houses and orchards, where the wooden
frames on which the weavers used to stretch their dark and colored
cloths?

Whatever plant or work of human hands had risen, outside the city walls
and towers to the height of a man's breast, thus interrupting the
uniformity of the plain, had vanished from the earth, and beyond, on the
bird's best hunting-grounds, brownish spots sown with black circles
appeared among the green of the meadows.

Late in October of the preceding year, just after the storks left the
country, a Spanish army had encamped here, and a few hours before the
return of the winged wanderers in the first opening days of spring, the
besiegers retired without having accomplished their purpose.