But Jan Rubens had a bad habit of thinking for himself. The habit grew
upon him until the whisper was passed from this one to that, that he was
becoming decidedly atheistic.

Spain held a strong hand upon Antwerp, and the policy of Philip the
Second was to crush opposition in the bud. Jan Rubens had criticized
Spanish rule, and given it as his opinion that the Latin race would not
always push its domination upon the people of the North.

At this time Spain was so strong that she deemed herself omnipotent, and
was looking with lustful eyes towards England. Drake and Frobisher and
Walter Raleigh were learning their lessons in seafaring; Elizabeth was
Queen; while up at Warwickshire a barefoot boy named William Shakespeare
was playing in the meadows, and romping in the lanes and alleys of
Stratford.

All this was taking place at the time when Jan Rubens was doing a little
thinking on his own account. On reading the history of Europe, Flanders
seems to one to have been a battle-ground from the dawn of history up to
the night of June Eighteenth, Eighteen Hundred Fifteen, with a few
incidental skirmishes since, for it is difficult to stop short. And it
surely was meet that Napoleon should have gone up there to receive his
Waterloo, and charge his cavalry into a sunken roadway, making a bridge
across with a mingled mass of men and horses; upon which site now is a
huge mound thrown up by the English, surmounted by a gigantic bronze lion
cast from the captured cannon of the French.

Napoleon belonged to the Latin race: he pushed his rule north into
Flanders, and there his prowess ended--there at the same place where
Spanish rule had been throttled and turned back upon itself. "Thus far,