THE BURGOMASTER'S WIFE

By Georg Ebers

Volume 5.



CHAPTER XXVIII.

Days and weeks had passed, July was followed by sultry August, and that,
too, was drawing to a close. The Spaniards still surrounded Leyden, and
the city now completely resembled a prison. The soldiers and armed
citizens did their duty wearily and sullenly, there was business enough
at the town-hall, but the magistrates' work was sad and disagreeable; for
no message of hope came from the Prince or the Estates, and everything to
be considered referred to the increasing distress and the terrible
follower of war, the plague, which had made its entry into Leyden with
the famine. Moreover the number of malcontents weekly increased. The
friends of the old order of affairs now raised their voices more and more
loudly, and many a friend of liberty, who saw his family sickening,
joined the Spanish sympathizers and demanded the surrender of the city.
The children went to school and met in the playrounds as before, but
there was rarely a flash of the merry pertness of former days, and what
had become of the boys' red cheeks and the round arms of the little
girls? The poor drew their belts tighter, and the morsel of bread,
distributed by the city to each individual, was no longer enough to quiet
hunger and support life.

Junker Georg had long been living in Burgomaster Van der Werff's house.