R. v. R. The Life & Times of Rembrandt van Rijn/The Immortal Lovers - Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning/The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin/The Great Physician - A Short Life of Sir William Osler [antikvár]

FOREWORDAmsterdam, October p, 1669.Explaining How I Came to Write This BookWe buried him yesterday and I shall never forget that terrible morning. The rain had ceased and a cold, gloomy fog had throv^^n a dark and chilling pall over the v^^hole city. In the empty street the small group of mourners stood silently outside the church door waiting for the coffm to arrive.Last Friday, a few hours before he died and during a moment of semiconsciousness, he had whispered to me that he wanted to rest next to Saskia. He must have forgotten that he had sold her grave long ago, when Hendrickje passed away; caught without a penny, he had been forced to sell the family lot in the Old Church to buy a grave for his second wife. I promised him I would do my best, though of course it was out of the question, and he went to his last sleep fully convinced that soon his dust would mingle with that of the woman he had loved in the days of his youth.And then three days ago Magdalena van Loo called. I had always found her mean and jealous and apt to whine, but I had tried to like her on account of her father-in-law and of the poor boy she had married. She told me a long rambling story about some gold pieces which apparently had belonged to Cornelia