His brothers, Adolphus and Henry—a youth who had just left College—returned eagerly to Dillenburg to join him, and Count Louis left Brederode, who was revolving one scheme after another that came to nothing, and hastened to Germany.
Meanwhile William waited for news from the Netherlands, for news of the proceedings of Alva, and for answers to the letters that he had sent to the German Protestant Princes—the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse.
Now at last he had begun to reap the fruit of that foresight which had induced him to engage in his second marriage despite the lively disapproval of Philip.
That marriage had been as disastrous as his worst enemies could have hoped, but at least it had given him some claim on the friendship of Anne's relations.
William had also asked the old Landgrave Philip to send him a Lutheran preacher, who was immediately and joyfully dispatched, and the Prince of Orange occupied the first leisure he had known for years in studying the New Testament and listening to the exposition of the tenets of Martin Luther.
But Alva, Philip's swift and sure right hand, had lost no time in striking him one blow that hit both his pride and his affections.
His eldest son, the Count of Buren, was beguiled by Alva from school in Louvain (where William had left him, relying on the high and ancient privileges of the University) and sent to Spain, where he had gone a willing captive, flattered and caressed, for he was a child and knew nothing of his father nor of Philip.
Thus the first move was to Alva, and the Prince, bitterly wounded and outraged, had had to admit that his sagacity had been at fault; what foolishness to rely on any charters or privileges where Alva and Philip were concerned.
He took this grief silently and applied himself to long and careful preparations for the part he intended to take upon himself. He was hours closeted with Count John, hours with the Lutheran minister; his private table was covered with papers on which theological arguments were mingled with numerical calculations—estimates of the worth of his now available estates, estimates even of the value of his jewels and plate, rude maps of the Netherlands, lists of the towns with their several strengths, rough draughts of letters to the Emperor, to the King of France, to the Order of the Golden Fleece.