seen, followed by her two children, going toward the cemetery of a
village near Haerlem. The pale cheeks of this lady, her eyes red with
weeping, her very melancholy face, bespoke one of those deep sorrows over
which Time might fling its flowers, but it would be all in vain. Her
children, the elder of whom was barely four years old, accompanied her,
with the carelessness natural to their age. Indeed, they were astonished
to see their noble mansion still in mourning, and their mother and
themselves in mourning also, though a melancholy voice had said to them
one day, when they were shown a bier covered with funereal pall,
"Children, you have no more a father."

A month after this they were playing as gaily as ever. Can it be that
the griefs of our early years are so terrible that heaven will not permit
them to dwell in remembrance? It may be so; but at all events those
children forgot for whom they had been put into mourning.

As that lady arrived at the little cemetery gate, the passers-by asked
aloud (for curiosity respects neither modesty nor grief) who might be
that lady who passed on so sadly, and who it seemed had good cause for
her sadness.

And an old beggar-woman said, "That lady passing by is the widow of John
Durer, who died this three months gone, and who was in his time Minister
to his Majesty the Emperor."


II.

John Durer belonged to the family of a poor shepherd. He worked hard as
a scholar, but even when he was at play he showed a violent disposition