Barren spots amid the luxuriant growth of vegetation marked the places
where they had pitched their tents, the black cinders of the burnt coals
their camp-fires.

The sorely-threatened inhabitants of the rescued city, with thankful
hearts, uttered sighs of relief. The industrious, volatile populace had
speedily forgotten the sufferings endured, for early spring is so
beautiful, and never does a rescued life seem so delicious as when we are
surrounded by the joys of spring.

A new and happier time appeared to have dawned, not only for Nature but
for human beings. The troops quartered in the besieged city, which had
the day before committed many an annoyance, had been dismissed with song
and music. The carpenter's axe flashed in the spring sunlight before the
red walls, towers and gates, and cut sharply into the beams from which
new scaffolds and frames were to be erected; noble cattle grazed
peacefully undisturbed around the city, whose desolated gardens were
being dug, sowed and planted afresh. In the streets and houses a
thousand hands, which but a short time before had guided spears and
arquebuses on the walls and towers, were busy at useful work, and old
people sat quietly before their doors to let the warm spring sun shine on
their backs.

Few discontented faces were to be seen in Leyden on this eighteenth of
April. True, there was no lack of impatient ones, and whoever wanted
to seek them need only go to the principal school, where noon was
approaching and many boys gazed far more eagerly through the open
windows of the school-room, than at the teacher's lips.