Holland and its People/Chapter VII
The railway from Leyden to Haarlem runs upon a strip of land comprised between the sea and the bottom of that great lake which thirty years ago covered all the country and which lies between Haarlem, Leyden, and Amsterdam. The stranger travelling on that road with an old map printed before 1850, looks about him and can find no lake of Haarlem. This happened to myself; and the thing appearing strange, I turned to a neighbor and demanded an account of the vanished lake. My fellow travellers laughed, and my question received the following odd reply: "We have drunk it up."
The story of this wonderful work would be a subject worthy of a poem.
The great lake of Haarlem, joined by the meeting of four small lakes, and swelled by the effects of inundations, had already, at the end of the seventeenth century, a circuit of forty-four kilometres, and was called a sea. A sea indeed it was, and a tempestous one, in which fleets of seventy ships had fought, and many vessels had been wrecked. Thanks to the downs which stretched along its shores, this great mass of water had not yet been able to join itself to the North Sea, and thus convert Southern Holland into an island; but on the other side, it threatened the country, the towns and villages, and constrained the inhabitants to be continually on the defensive. Already in 1640 a Dutch engineer of the name of Leeghwater had published a book with the design of showing the possibility and utility of draining this dangerous lake; but partly because of the difficulties presented by the method proposed by him, and more because the country was then engaged in the war with Spain, the undertaking found no promoters. The political events which followed the peace of 1648, and the disastrous wars between France and England, caused Leeghwater's project to be forgotten until the beginning of the present century. Finally, towards 1819, the question was resumed, and new studies and new proposals made; but the execution was still deferred, and, perhaps, would not even yet have been brought to a conclusion, but for an unforeseen event which gave it the final impulse. On the 9th of November 1836, the waters of the Haarlem sea, driven by a furious wind, overflowed the dykes and reached even to the gates of Amsterdam; and in the following mouth they invaded Leyden and all the country about the city. It was the final provocation. Holland took tip the glove, and in 1839 the Staten General condemned the insolent sea to vanish from the face of the State. The works were begun in 1840. They commenced by the construction of a double dyke around the lake, and a broad canal destined to receive the waters, which then, by other canals, would be conducted to the sea. The lake contained seven hundred and twenty-four millions of cubic metres of water, without counting rains and filtration which, during the draining, were found to amount to thirty-three millions of cubic metres of water per year. The engineers had computed the quantity of water which would pass monthly from the lake through the canal at thirty-six millions two hundred thousand cubic metres. Three enormous steam-engines were sufficient for the work. One was placed near Haarlem, another between Haarlem and Amsterdam, the third near Leyden. This last was named Leeghwater, in honor of the engineer who had first proposed the scheme. I saw it, for not only is it preserved, but is still in use at times, to absorb and turn into the canal the rain-water and that of filtration. And so with the other two, which equal the last. The engines are enclosed in large, round, battlemented towers, each one of which is encircled by a row of windows with pointed arches from which project eleven great arms that, rising and falling with majestic deliberation, put in motion as many pumps, capable of raising, each in its turn, the enormous weight of sixty-six cubic metres of water. The first to be set to work was the Leeghwater, on the 7th of June 1849. The other two began soon after. From that time the level of the lake sank one centimetre a day. After thirty-nine months of labor, the gigantic enterprise was completed the engines had absorbed nine hundred and twenty-four million two hundred and sixty-six thousand one hundred and twelve cubic metres of water; the Haarlem sea was no more. This work, which cost seven million two hundred and forty thousand three hundred, and sixty-eight florins, gave to Holland a new province of eighteen thousand five hundred hectares of land. Cultivators came from all parts of Holland. They began by sowing colza, which gave a wonderful return; and then every kind of produce, which succeeded perfectly well. And as the population came from different provinces, there were to be found all the different systems of cultivation rivalling one another, Zealand, Brabant, Friesland, Groningen, and North Holland were there, and there were to be heard all the dialects of the United Provinces; a smaller Holland within Holland.
As you approach Haarlem the villas and gardens become more and more numerous; but the city remains hidden among trees, above which appears only the tall bell-tower of the cathedral, surmounted by an iron ornament in the bulbous form of a Muscovite steeple. Entering the town you see on every side canals, windmills, drawbridges, fishing-boats, and houses reflected in the water; and after having walked about a hundred paces you come out into a vast square, at which you exclaim, in pleased wonder: "Oh, this is really Holland!
In one corner is the cathedral, a bare and lofty edifice, surmounted by a roof in the form of a prism, which seems to cleave the sky like the edge of a sharp axe. Opposite the cathedral rises the ancient City Hall, crowned with battlements, with a roof like a ship bottom upwards, and a little balcony like a bird-cage stuck over the door; one part of the façade is hidden by two little houses of strange form, made up of theatre, church, and a castle of fireworks. On the other sides of the square there are houses in all the most capricious styles of Dutch architecture, here and there a little off the perpendicular, black, reddish, or vermilion, with their fronts studded with white bosses, looking like so many chess-boards, and a row of trees planted close against the walls so as to conceal all the upper windows. Next the cathedral there is an extravagant edifice, which is for public auctions; a monument of fantastic architecture, half red and half white, all steps, obelisks, pyramids, bas-reliefs, and nameless ornaments in the form of chandeliers and extinguishers and twelfth-night cakes, which seem thrown at haphazard, and all together present the effect of an Indian pagoda transformed, with a crazy look of Spain about it, and a touch of Holland, the whole done by an artist somewhat the worse for gin. But the strangest thing is an ugly bronze statue in the middle of the square, with an inscription which says: "Laurentius Johannes filius Costerus Typographiæ litteris mobilibus e metalle fusis inventor." "What!" asks the ignorant stranger on the spot; "what news is this? I thought Gutenberg was the inventor of printing! What pretender have we here? Who is this Coster?
This Coster's name was Lawrence Janszoon, and was called Coster because he was a sacristan, or coster in Dutch. Tradition relates that this Coster, born in Haarlem towards the end of the fourteenth century, walking one day in the beautiful grove that lies to the south of the city, broke off a branch from a tree, and to amuse his children, cut with his knife some letters in relief upon it, from which grew the first idea of printing. In fact, returning home, he dipped these coarse wooden types in ink, printed them on paper, made new attempts, perfected the letters, printed entire pages, and finally, after long vicissitudes of study, fatigue, deceptions, and persecutions, brought upon him by copyists and elucidators, he succeeded in producing his chef d'œuvre, which was the "Speculum humanæ salvationis," printed in German, in double columns, and Gothic characters. This "Speculum humanæ salvationis," which can be seen in the Town Hall, is partly printed with wooden immovable types and partly with movable ones, and bears the date of 1440, the most remote date which can be admitted for the invention of movable types, in which the invention of printing really consists. If we accept the "Speculum," then Gutenberg is done for. But the proofs. Here begin the difficulties for the Dutch inventor. Among the objects belonging to him which are preserved in the Town Hall, there are no movable types; and there is an utter absence of written documents, or any testimony whatever which would prove beyond a doubt that the "Speculum," or at least that part of it printed with movable types, is the work of Coster. How do the supporters of the Dutch inventor supply this need? Here starts up another legend. On Christmas night 1440, whilst Coster, old and sick, was present at the midnight Mass, praying to God for strength to bear and to struggle against the persecutions of his enemies, one of his workmen - one of those who had sworn never to betray the secret of his invention - carried off his instruments, types, and books, which poor Coster discovering on his return home, he died of grief. According to the legend, this sacrilegious thief was Faust of Magonza, or the elder brother of Gutenberg; and this is the explanation, both of how the glory of the invention passed from Holland to Germany, and why the statue of poor Coster has the right to stand in the square at Haarlem, like an avenging spectre. Upon this question, which went on for centuries, an entire library has been written in Holland and Germany; until a few years ago it was doubtful before which of the statues, that at Haarlem or that at Magonza, the traveller should doff his hat. Germany rejected the pretensions of Holland with supreme disdain; Holland, although less and less positive obstinately ignored the pretensions of Germany. But now it appears that the knot of the question is for ever undone. Doctor Von Linde, a Dutchman, has published a, book entitled "The Legend of Coster," after reading which, according to the Hollanders themselves, you can put no more faith in Coster as the inventor of printing than in Tubal-Cain as the discoverer of iron, or Prometheus the robber of celestial fire. Consequently the statue of poor Coster may be melted up into a fine cannon to send against the pirates of Sumatra. But with Holland will remain for ever, in the field of typography, the incontestable glory of the Elzevirs, and the enviable honor of having printed almost all the great writers of the age of Louis XIV., of having diffused throughout Europe the French philosophy of the eighteenth century, of having gathered up, defended, and propagated human thought, when proscribed by despotism and denied by fear.
In the City Hall there is a picture gallery, which might be called the gallery of Franz Hals, because the chief works of that great artist are its principal ornaments. Born, as we know, at Malines, at the end of the sixteenth century, he lived many years at Haarlem, whilst landscape art flourished there, and among other illustrious Dutch artists, Ruysdaël, Winauts, Brouwer, and Cornelius Bega were all sojourning there. The principal room in the gallery, which is very large, is almost entirely occupied by his large pictures. As you enter you experience for a moment a singular illusion. You seem to have entered a banquet-hall, divided, as great banquets usually are, into different tables; and at the sound of your step all the guests have turned round to look at you. They are all groups of officers of archers and administrators of the hospital, of life size, some seated, some standing, about tables splendidly decorated, and all with faces turned towards the spectator, like people in the attitude of being photographed. On every side are to be seen broad faces full of health and good humor, with eyes fixed upon you, seeming to say, "Do you know, me?" And there is so much truth of expression in these faces, that you really feel as if you knew them, as if you had met them many times in the streets of Leyden and the Hague. This truth of expression, the jovial character of the scene, the rich and ample costumes of the sixteenth century, the arms, the tables, and there being no other pictures to lead the mind to other times, make it seem that you are really looking at the Holland of two hundred years ago, feeling the air of the great century, living in the midst of those strong, candid, cordial people. You are not in a gallery; you are present at the representation of an historical play; and you would not be astonished to see Maurice of Orange or Frederic Henry arrive.
The most noteworthy of these pictures represents nineteen archers grouped around their colonel, and it is one of the chef d'œuvres of the high Dutch school, broad and free in design, warm and brilliant in color, worthy to be placed beside the famous "Banquet of the Civic Guard," by Van der Helst. Among the pictures by other artists, I remember one by Peter Brenghel the younger, which is a comic illustration of more than eighty Flemish proverbs, and which I cannot think of without a smile. But it is a picture which cannot be described for many honest reasons.
In one room of the picture gallery is preserved the banner which belonged to the famous heroine Kanan Hasselaer, the Joan d'Are of Haarlem, who in 1572 fought at the head of three hundred armed Amazons against the Spaniards who were besieging the city. The defence of Haarlem, though not crowned with victory, was not less glorious than that of Leyden. The city was surrounded by old walls and towers falling into ruin, and had, besides the women's legion, only four thousand armed defenders. The Spaniards, after having cannonaded the walls for three days, rushed with great confidence to the assault; but repulsed by a rain of bullets, stones, boiling oil, and burning pitch, were obliged to proceed to lay siege to the place in the regular manner. The city was succoured by the country people, men, women, and children, who, sliding over the ice under favour of the December fogs, brought provisions and munitions of war on sleds. William of Orange, on his side, did all that was in his power to make the Spaniards raise the siege. But fortune did not smile upon him. Three thousand Dutch soldiers, sent forward first, were defeated, the prisoners were hung and one officer put to death on a gibbet with his head downwards. Another attempt to aid the city had the same result: the Spaniards cut off the head of an officer whom they had taken, and threw it into the city with an insulting inscription. The citizens, in their turn, threw over into the enemy's camp a barrel containing the heads of eleven Spanish prisoners, with a note, which said: "Ten heads are sent to the Duke of Alva in payment of his tax of tenths, with one head more for interest."
The fighting became more and more desperate, accompanied by the explosion of mines and countermines in the bosom of the earth. On the 28th of January there arrived in the city by the lake of Haarlem one hundred and seventy sledges loaded with bread and powder. Don Frederick, the Spanish captain, wished to raise the siege; but his father, the Duke of Alva, ordered him to persist. Finally the thaws began, and it became difficult to get supplies into the town; the besieged began to feel the pangs of hunger. On the 25th of March they made a sortie, in which they burned three hundred tents and took seven cannon; but this success was rendered vain by a defeat sustained by the fleet of the Prince of Orange, which had given battle to the Spanish ships, on Haarlem lake. This misfortune threw the besieged into despair. In the month of June they were reduced to all the last horrors of famine. On the 1st of July they made a vain attempt to come to terms with the enemy. On the 8th, five thousand volunteers sent by William of Orange to succour the city were defeated, and a prisoner was sent into Haarlem to carry the news, with nose and ears cut off. Then the besieged resolved to form a serried legion, with the women and children in their midst, and sally out of the city to cut their way through the enemy's camp. This resolution being made known to Don Frederick, he hypocritically promised pardon if the city would surrender without conditions. The city surrendered, the Spaniards entered, massacred all the soldiers of the garrison, cut off the heads of one thousand citizens, and tying two hundred more in couples, threw them into the lake. The Spanish army had paid with twelve thousand dead this victory secured by treachery and contaminated by the executioner.
From the museum I went to the cathedral, with the hope of hearing the famous organ of Christian Müller, said to be the largest in the world, and counting among its glories those of having been played by the celebrated Händel and by a boy of ten years old whose name was Mozart. The church, founded in the fifteenth century, is white and bare like a mosque, and covered by a high vaulted roof lined with cedar-wood, supported upon twenty-eight light columns. In one wall there is a cannon-ball which dates from the siege of 1573. In the middle of the church is a monument consecrated to the memory of the engineer Conrad, the builder of the sluice-gates of Katwijk, and his colleague Brunings, "protectors of Holland against the furies of the sea and the power of the tempest." Behind the choir is buried the great poet Bilderdijk. Suspended from one of the arches hang some small models of ships of war, in memory of the fifth crusade, which was led by Count William I. of Holland. The tomb of Coster is near the pulpit. The organ, supported by porphyry columns, covers all one wall from roof to pavement, and has four key-boards, sixty-four registers, and five thousand pipes, some of which are twice the height of a Dutch house. At the moment there were some strangers in the church; the organist arrived promptly; and I could hear, as Victor Hugo says, "the music of God's cannon." I am unable to say, having no knowledge of the art, in what manner the organ of Haarlem differs from that of St. Paul's in London, or that in the Fribourg Cathedral, or that of the basilica of Seville. I heard the usual trumpet announcing the battle, followed by a formidable tumult of cannon, cries of the wounded, and victorious strains that grew more and more distant until they were lost among the hills; and then arose a tranquil harmony of flutes and pastoral melodies, which seemed to present all the sweetness of country life, when suddenly the lightning flashed, the hurricane was unchained, the church shook to its foundations; then the tempest was stilled, little by little, to the sound of the tremulous and solemn chant of legions of angels arriving slowly from an immense distance, and floating up among the clouds, pursued by the curses of an army of demons growling from the depths of the earth. The whole ended with an air from "La Fille de Madame Angot," which conveyed that it had been all a joke, and that the organist recommended himself to the courtesy of the strangers.
From the top of the steeple the eye embraces all the beautiful country about Haarlem, sprinkled with groves, windmills, and villages; the two great canals that go to Leyden and Amsterdam can be seen, skimmed by long files of boats with sails; the steeples of Amsterdam; the fields that cover what was once the lake of Haarlem; the village of Bloemendal, surrounded by gardens and villas; the desolate downs which defend this terrestrial paradise against the tempest; and beyond the downs, the North Sea, looking like a livid, luminous streak across the mists of the horizon. Coming out of the church, I chose a street and started on a tour about the city.
Although, in many respects, Haarlem resembles all other Dutch cities, still it has a character of its own by which it is stamped distinctly enough upon the memory. It is a pretty, quiet place, in which the traveller feels more acutely than in any other the need of his friend or his wife upon his arm. It is a woman's town. A broad watercourse, called the Spaarne, which serves as a canal for the drainage of the old lake of Haarlem and the gulf of Zuyder Zee, crosses it, separating into several branches, and forming a canal, which encircles it like a fortress. The internal canals are bordered by trees, which almost meet above them in a vault of verdure, so that each one seems a lakelet in a garden, and the barges and boats that float along in the shade seem there for pleasure rather than for business. All the streets are paved with bricks, and the houses are built of bricks, so that on every side, above and below, you see the same eternal red color, as if the city had been excavated out of a mountain of red jasper. A large number of the houses have their pointed façades cut into eight, ten, and even sixteen steps, like the paper churches children cut out with scissors; and there are very few mirrors, nothing hung in the windows, and signs over the shops are rare. The streets are so clean that one hesitates to let fall the ashes of one's cigar. For long distances you meet no living soul, or only some girl going alone to school, with her hair loose over her shoulders, and her books under her arm. There is no sound of labor, no roll of cart-wheels, no cry of itinerant vendor. The whole place has an appearance of aristocratic reserve and modest coquetry, which excites the curiosity in a singular way, and makes one walk on and on, insensible of fatigue, as if by dint of walking about one might discover some pleasant secret which the whole city keeps hidden from strangers.
There is a beautiful grove of beeches at the southern extremity of the town, believed to be a remnant of that immense forest which, in ancient times, covered the greater part of Holland. It is traversed by paths, and has cafés, kiosks, and society-rooms, and has, in the middle, a pretty park, stocked with deer. In one solitary shady spot is placed a small monument erected in 1823 in honor of Lawrence Coster, who, according to the legend, cut here the famous branch of a beech-tree on which he engraved the first types. Wandering about among the dark recesses of the wood I met a boy, who saluted me with a gentle "Bon jour," turning his face away; I asked my way of a girl with a gold band around her head and she blushed as red as a carnation; I requested a light from a peasant who was reading a newspaper; I passed a lady on horseback, who looked at me with two light-blue eyes, serene as the sky above us; and then returned towards the entrance of the grove, where there is a gallery of modern pictures about which I feel no remorse in being silent.
It is, however, well to observe, apropos of this gallery, that of late years Dutch art has made, under several aspects, honorable progress. The style which is preferred is still small landscapes, and in this there is no change; but painting scenes of private life has risen into higher regions. It has left the dregs of society for the middle classes, and come out of the taverns to dedicate itself lovingly to that sober, severe, and valorous people, the fishermen who labor and suffer in silence on the coast of Holland from Helder to the mouths of the Meuse; it has forgotten the plebeian orgies and dances, to represent the sailor leaving for the herring fishery, and the wife on the shore giving her last farewell and crying, "God be with you!" or the fisherman returning from a long voyage to his beloved Scheveningen, his children running with open arms to meet him; or the sea lashed by a tempest, and the family of the poor sailor, out on the downs, and with anxious, tearful eyes watching the horizon for a black point upon its darkness. Excessive minuteness has disappeared; painting has taken a broader, freer manner. Few artists go to study out of their own country, and those who do lose their native character; but of those who remain, their work, especially landscape, is still, as formerly, a faithful mirror of their country, modest and original, and full of sadness, sweetness, and peace. Near the grove is the garden of Herr Koelage, the most famous tulip-fancier in Holland.
The word "tulip" recalls one of the strangest popular follies that has ever been seen in the world, which showed itself in Holland towards the middle of the seventeenth century. The country at that time had reached the height of prosperity; antique parsimony had given place to luxury; the houses of the wealthy, very modest at the beginning of the century, were transformed into little palaces; velvet, silk, and pearls replaced the patriarchal simplicity of the ancient costume; Holland had become vain, ambitious, and prodigal. After having filled their houses with pictures, hangings, porcelain, and precious objects from all the countries of Europe and Asia, the rich merchants of the large Dutch cities began to spend considerable sums in ornamenting their gardens with tulips - the flower which answers best to that innate avidity for vivid colors which the Dutch people manifest in so many ways. This taste for tulips promoted their rapid cultivation; everywhere gardens were laid out, studies promoted, new varieties of the favorite flower sought for. In a short time the fever became general; on every side there swarmed unknown tulips, of strange forms, and wonderful shades or combinations of colors, full of contrasts, caprices, and surprises. Prices rose in a marvellous way; a new variegation, a new form, obtained in those blessed leaves was an event, a fortune. Thousands of persons gave themselves up to the study with the fury of insanity; all over the country nothing was talked of but petals, bulbs, colors, vases, seeds. The mania grew to such a pass that all Europe was laughing at it. Bulbs of the favorite tulips of the rarer varieties rose to fabulous prices; some constituted a fortune, like a house, an orchard, or a mill; one bulb was equivalent to a dowry for the daughter of a rich family; for one bulb were given, in I know not what city, two carts of grain, four carts of barley, four oxen, twelve sheep, two casks of wine, four casks of beer, a thousand pounds of cheese, a complete dress, and silver goblet. Another bulb of a tulip named Semper Augustus was bought at the price of thirteen thousand florins. A bulb of the Admiral Enkhuyzen tulip cost two thousand dollars. One day there were only two bulbs of the Semper Augustus left in Holland, one at Amsterdam and the other at Haarlem, and for one of them there were offered, and refused, four thousand six hundred florins, a splendid coach, and a pair of grey horses with beautiful harness. Another offered twelve acres of land, and he also was refused. On the registers of Alkmaar it is recorded that in 1637 there were sold in that city, at public auction, one hundred and twenty tulips for the benefit of the Orphanage, and that the sale produced one hundred and eighty thousand francs. Then they began to traffic in tulips, as in State bonds and shares. They sold for enormous sums bulbs which they did not possess, engaging to provide them for a certain day; and in this way a traffic was carried on for a much larger number of tulips than the whole of Holland could furnish. It is related that one Dutch town sold twenty millions of francs' worth of tulips, and that an Amsterdam merchant gained in this trade more than sixty-eight thousand florins in the space of four months. These sold that which they had not, and those that which they never could have; the market passed from hand to hand, the differences were paid, and the flowers for and by which so many people were ruined or enriched, flourished only in the imaginations of the traffickers. Finally matters arrived at such a pass that, many buyers having refused to pay the sums agreed upon, and contests and disorders following the Government decreed that these debts should be considered as ordinary obligations, and that payment should be exacted in the usual legal manner; then prices fell suddenly, as low as fifty florins for the Semper Augustus, and the scandalous traffic ceased. Now the culture of flowers is no longer a mania, but is carried on for love of them, and Haarlem is the principal temple. She still provides a great part of Europe and South America with flowers. The city is encircled by gardens, which, towards the end of April and the beginning of May, are covered with myriads of tulips, hyacinths, carnations, auriculas, anemones, ranunculus, camelias, primroses, and other flowers, forming an immense wreath about Haarlem, from which travellers from all parts of the world gather a bouquet in passing. Of late years the hyacinth has risen into great honour; but the tulip is still king of the gardens, and Holland's supreme affection. I should have to change my pen for the brush of Von Huysem or Menendez, if I were to attempt to describe the pomp of their gorgeous, luxuriant, dazzling colors, which, if the sensation given to the eye may be likened to that of the ear, might be said to resemble a shout of joyous laughter or a cry of love in the green silence of the garden; affecting one like the loud music of a festival. There are to be seen the Duke of Toll tulip, the tulips called "simple precocious" in more than six hundred varieties; the "double precocious"; the late tulips, divided into unicolored, fine, superfine, and rectified; the fine, subdivided into violet, rose, and striped; then the monsters or parrots, the hybrids, the thieves; classified into a thousand orders of nobility and elegance; tinted with all the shades of color conceivable to the human mind; spotted, speckled, striped, edged, variegated, with leaves fringed, waved, festooned; decorated with gold and silver medals; distinguished bynames of generals, painters, birds, rivers, poets, cities, queens, and a thousand loving and bold adjectives, which recall their metamorphoses, their adventures, and their triumphs, and leave a sweet confusion in the mind of beautiful images and pleasant thoughts.
After this, I thought I might leave for Amsterdam, whither I was impelled by an irresistible curiosity; and already I had my foot upon the step of the railway-carriage, and my eye upon a snug corner, near the door, when I felt myself seized by the skirt of my coat, and turned to behold the spectre of my courteous critic of Italy, who said, in a reproachful tone: "But, the commerce, the trade, the establishments of Haarlem, where have you left them?" "Ah, true," I replied, "you are one of those who desire description, guide, dictionary, treatise, railway indicator, and statistics, all in one book? Well, I will try and content you. Know, then, that there is in Haarlem a very rich museum of chemical, physical, optical, and hydraulic instruments, bequeathed to the city by one Peter Taylor van der Hulst, with a sum of money destined to serve every year for a scientific competition; that there is also a famous type-foundry of Greek and Hebrew characters; that there are several fine cotton factories founded under the patronage of King William II.; that there are washing establishments famous throughout Holland." At this moment I heard the whistle of the train. "One minute!" cried the critic, trying to keep me back. "How large are the electric machines in the Taylor museum? How much do the cotton factories produce yearly? What kind of soap is used in the washing establishments?" "Eh! leave me in peace," I answered, shutting the door as the train began to move; "don't you know the proverb, that you cannot bear the cross and sing?"
And now for thee, Amsterdam of the ninety islands, Venice of the north, queen of the Zuyder Zee!