“Ja! Ja!” said Van Hoogendorp, in a cadence as solemn as the bell of the cathedral; “I have seen many strange things; I remember what few men living can remember: I mind well the time when the ‘Hollandische Vrow’ made her first voyage from Batavia, and brought back a paroquet for the burgomaster’s wife; the great trees upon the Boomjes were but saplings when I was a boy; they were not thicker than my waist;” here he looked down upon himself with as much complacency as though he were a sylph. “Ach Gott! they were brave times, schiedam cost only half a guilder the krug.” I waited in hopes he would continue, but the glorious retrospect he had evoked, seemed to occupy all his thoughts, and he smoked away without ceasing. “You remember the Austrians, then?” said I, by way of drawing him on. “They were dogs!” said he, spitting out. “Ah!” said I, “the French were better then?” “Wolves!” ejaculated he, after glowing on me fearfully. There was a long pause after this; I perceived that I had taken a wrong path to lead him into conversation, and he was too deeply overcome with indignation to speak. During this time, however, his anger took a thirsty form, and he swigged away at the schiedam most manfully. The effect of his libations became at last evident, his great green stagnant eyes flashed and flared, his wide nostrils swelled and contracted, and his breathing became short and thick, like the convulsive sobs of a steam-engine when they open and shut the valves alternately; I watched these indications for some time, wondering what they might portend, when at length he withdrew his pipe from his mouth, and with such a tone of voice as he might have used, if confessing a bloody and atrocious murder, he said-- “I will tell you a story.” Had the great stone figure of Erasmus beckoned to me across the marketplace, and asked me the news “on change,” I could not have been more amazed; and not venturing on the slightest interruption, I refilled my pipe, and nodded sententiously across the table, while he thus began. CHAPTER III. VAN HOOGENDORP’S TALE. It was in the winter of the year 1806, the first week of December, the frost was setting in, and I resolved to pay a visit to my brother, whom I hadn’t seen for forty years; he was burgomaster of Antwerp. It is a long voyage and a perilous one, but with the protection of Providence, our provisions held out, and on the fourth night after we sailed, a violent shock shook the vessel from stem to stern, and we found ourselves against the quay of Antwerp. When I reached my brother’s house I found him in bed, sick; the doctors said it was a dropsy, I don’t know how that might be, for he drank more gin than any man in Holland, and hated water all his life. We were twins, but no one would have thought so, I looked so thin and meagre beside him.