The Palace in the Wood
As the boys skated onward, they saw a number of fine country
seats, all decorated and surrounded according to the Dutchest of
Dutch taste, but impressive to look upon, with their great, formal houses, elaborate gardens, square hedges, and wide ditches--some crossed by a bridge, having a gate in the middle to be carefully locked at night. These ditches, everywhere traversing the landscape, had long ago lost their summer film and now shone under the sunlight like trailing ribbons of glass.
The boys traveled bravely, all the while performing the
surprising feat of producing gingerbread from their pockets and
causing it to vanish instantly.
Twelve miles were passed. A few more long strokes would take
them to The Hague, when Van Mounen proposed that they should vary
their course by walking into the city through the Bosch.
"Agreed!" cried one and all--and their skates were off in a
twinkling.
The Bosch is a grand park or wood, nearly two miles long, containing the celebrated House in the Wood--Huis in't Bosch--sometimes used as a royal residence.
The building, though plain outside for a palace, is elegantly
furnished within and finely frescoed--that is, the walls and
ceiling are covered with groups and designs painted directly upon
them while the plaster was fresh. Some of the rooms are
tapestried with Chinese silks, beautifully embroidered. One
contains a number of family portraits, among them a group of
royal children who in time were orphaned by a certain ax, which
figures very frequently in European history. These children were
painted many times by the Dutch artist Van Dyck, who was court
painter to their father, Charles the First of England. Beautiful
children they were. What a deal of trouble the English nation
would have been spared had they been as perfect in heart and soul
as they were in form!
The park surrounding the palace is charming, especially in
summer, for flowers and birds make it bright as fairyland. Long
rows of magnificent oaks rear their proud heads, conscious that
no profaning hand will ever bring them low. In fact, the Wood
has for ages been held as an almost sacred spot. Children are
never allowed to meddle with its smallest twig. The ax of the
woodman has never resounded there. Even war and riot have passed
it reverently, pausing for a moment in their devastating way. Philip of Spain, while he ordered Dutchmen to be mowed down by hundreds, issued a mandate that not a bough of the beautiful Wood should be touched. And once, when in a time of great necessity the State was about to sacrifice it to assist in filling a nearly exhausted treasury, the people rushed to the rescue, and nobly contributed the required amount rather than that the Bosch should fall.
What wonder, then, that the oaks have a grand, fearless air? Birds from all Holland have told them how, elsewhere, trees are cropped and bobbed into shape--but THEY are untouched. Year after year they expand in unclipped luxuriance and beauty; their wide-spreading foliage, alive with song, casts a cool shade over lawn and pathway or bows to its image in the sunny ponds.
Meanwhile, as if to reward the citizens for allowing her to have
her way for once, Nature departs from the invariable level, wearing gracefully the ornaments that have been reverently bestowed upon her. So the lawn slopes in a velvety green; the paths wind in and out; flower beds glow and send forth perfume; and ponds and sky look at each other in mutual admiration.
Even on that winter day the Bosch was beautiful. Its trees were
bare, but beneath them still lay the ponds, every ripple smoothed
into glass. The blue sky was bright overhead, and as it looked
down through the thicket of boughs, it saw another blue sky, not
nearly so bright, looking up from the dim thicket under the ice.
Never had the sunset appeared more beautiful to Peter than when
he saw it exchanging farewell glances with the windows and
shining roofs of the city before him. Never had The Hague itself
seemed more inviting. He was no longer Peter van Holp, going to
visit a great city, nor a fine young gentleman bent on
sight-seeing; he was a knight, an adventurer, travel-soiled and
weary, a Hop-o'-my-Thumb grown large, a Fortunatas approaching
the enchanted castle where luxury and ease awaited him, for his
own sister's house was not half a mile away.