Page:Dumas - Tales of Strange adventure (Methuen, 1907).djvu/80

68 see; even after Teniers and Terburg the Dutch are delightful people to know. In two hours we were at Amsterdam. A quarter of an hour later we w^ere mounting the steps of a charming house situated on the Keisergruatz. A servant was waiting to announce our approach, and next minute Madame Wittering, Messieurs Wittering, Jacobson and Gudin came running forward to meet and greet us.

Madame Wittering was still just the same charming personage I had already had the honour of meeting on three different occasions,—pretty, gentle, blushing like a girl, a delightful combination of the Parisienne and the Englishwoman. Her sister, Madame Jacobson, was in London. Gudin was then, as I have mentioned, just arrived from Scotland.

The table was laid. But there, when I say " the table was laid," I am speaking as if I were still at home in my own country; in Holland the table is always laid, laid permanently. It is the most hospitable country in the world,—hospitable in every sense of the expression. Each of us had his room ready prepared for him in this beautiful house, which partook of the character at once of castle and cottage. It was a pleasure to see the brilliant window-panes, the shining door-handles, the carpets everywhere, in the reception rooms, in the corridors and on the stairs, the well-trained servants you never see but know to be always there, busy keeping the house clean, bright and in good order.

While marshalling us to table Madame Wittering reminded us that the King made his public entry at three o'clock and that she had reserved for us at one of her friends' houses a window from which to view the procession. We made the best of our time and at a quarter to three proceeded to the house where we were expected.

We were now at May 11th. Just a week ago I had witnessed at Paris the Fête of May 4th. Separated by a week of time and a hundred and fifty leagues of distance, I beheld a second fête which at first sight seemed a sequel to the first. At Amsterdam as at Paris, at Paris and at Amsterdam, we passed under an avenue of tri-coloured flags amidst the shouts of the populace. Only the French flags carried the three colours vertically, the Dutch flags horizontally; only at Paris they were shouting " Down with Royalty," and at Amsterdam, "Long live the King!"

We were presented to our hosts for the time being. Here was another specimen of a Dutch gentleman's house; it was a little larger than Wittering's and like his stood between a canal and a garden, the front to the canal, the back to the garden. The ceilings were decorated with fine paintings. I had expected to meet at every step in Holland with lacquer furniture, porcelain vases of Chinese and Japanese workmanship, crowding the dining-rooms and drawing-rooms. But the Dutch are like those wealthy owners who think little of the precious things they possess; I saw plenty of French etagferes, some Dresden china figures, but very few screens, Chinese jars or such like nick-nacks.

About a quarter past three we heard a great hurly-burly, which brought us running to the windows. It was the beginning of the procession. First came the band, then the cavalry, then a crowd of pedestrians and carriages mixed together, then finally a national guard on horse-back, dressed in ordinary clothes with no arms but a riding-whip, with nothing to distinguish them from other people but a broad sash of crimson velvet.

The whole was preceded by two or three hundred workmen and street-boys tossing their caps in the air and singing the National Anthem of Holland.

Only strangely enough the National Anthem of the Dutch, the most Republican people in the world, is a Monarchical hymn.

Whilst I was conning over all the State entries of Royalties that I had ever seen in my life, the procession came filing past and the King arrived in front of our window, the centre figure of a dozen General Officers and Grand Officials of the Palace. He was a man of thirty or thirty-two, fair-haired, with blue eyes to which he can give, as occasion demands, a fine expression of gentleness or determination, and a beard covering the lower part of the face. The general effect was gracious and sympathetic, his greetings to the people kind and affable.

I bowed as he passed, and turning his head he accorded me a special look and wave of the hand. I could not suppose