This change of fortune, however, did not affect his private character. William had been a philosopher in the days of plenty. He remained a philosopher when he lived in a couple of furnished rooms and did not know how to pay for Saturday’s clean wash. And just as in the olden days he had worked hard to frustrate the plans of a cardinal who had expressed the intention of building a sufficient number of gallows to accommodate all Protestants, he now made it a point to bridle the energy of those ardent Calvinists who wished to hang all Catholics. His task was wellnigh hopeless. Between twenty and thirty thousand people had already been killed, the prisons of the Inquisition were full of new candidates for martyrdom and in far off Spain new armies were being recruited to smash the rebellion before it should spread to other parts of the Empire. To tell people who were fighting for their lives that they must love those who had just hanged their sons and brothers and uncles and grandfathers was out of the question. But by his personal example, by his conciliatory attitude towards those who opposed him, William was able to show his followers how a man of character can invariably rise superior to the old Mosaic law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. In this campaign for public decency he enjoyed the support of a very remarkable man. In the church of Gouda you may this very day read a curious monosyllabic epitaph which enumerates the virtues of one Dirck Coornhert, who lies buried there. This Coornhert was an interesting fellow. He was the son of well-to-do people and had spent many years of his youth traveling in foreign lands and getting some first hand information about Germany, Spain and France. As soon as he had returned home from this trip he fell in love with a girl who did not have a cent. His careful Dutch father had forbidden the marriage. When his son married the girl just the same, he did what those ancestral patriarchs were supposed to do under the circumstances; he talked about filial ingratitude and disinherited the boy. This was inconvenient, in so far as young Coornhert was now obliged to go to work for a living. But he was a young man of parts, learned a trade and set up as a copper-engraver. Alas! once a Dutchman, always a dominie. When evening came, he hastily dropped the burin, picked up the goose-quill and wrote articles upon the events of the day. His style was not exactly what one would nowadays call “amusing.” But his books contained a great deal of that amiable common sense which had distinguished the work of Erasmus and they made him many friends and brought him into contact with William the Silent who thought so highly of his abilities that he employed him as one of his confidential advisers.