Page:Augusta Seaman--Jacqueline of the carrier pigeons.djvu/34

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JACQUELINE

saw him again. We had always lived in the city of Louvain, and father was a professor of medicine in the big university there. Mother died when thou wast but a little baby. I can just remember her as tall and pale and golden-haired, and very gentle. Good Vrouw Voorhaas always kept house for us, and we had a big house then,—a grand house,—and many servants.

“Father was so loving and so kind! He used to take me on his knee and tell me many tales of Holland and the former days. I liked best those about the beautiful Countess Jacqueline of Bavaria, after whom he said I was named, and of how good and beloved she was, and how much she suffered for her people.

“Then came the day when he disappeared—no one knew how or where for a while—till the news reached Vrouw Voorhaas that he had been captured by the cruel Duke of Alva and put to death. It was at the same time that the young Count de Buren, the