الفصل الفصل 25 · The Palace in the Wood

. 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.

“At last, boys,” he cried in high glee, “we may hope for a royal resting

place--good beds, warm rooms, and something fit to eat. I never realized

before what a luxury such things are. Our lodgings at the Red Lion have

made us appreciate our own homes.”