A long time ago I had intended to look for places in The Hague that once played a role in the life of Constantijn Huygens, the famous seventeenth-century secretary of various House of Orange Stadholders, who was so versatile that his qualities and activities can hardly be condensed in one line. He was born at the end of the sixteenth century and reached an advanced age. As a result, his many letters, poems and notes form a valuable source for our knowledge of the years that went into our history as the Golden Age.

The birthplace in the Nobelstraat (1596-1599)

Current location: Nobelstraat 16

My walk had started in the early morning twilight, a quiet Sunday morning in September. On arriving in the old center of The Hague, I see how the light of dawn hesitates in the dense morning haze that, like a misty autumn shroud, makes the narrow alleys of the old city center seem even narrower. I am standing at the old ‘Koningspoort’ (King's Gate) in the Molenstraat, next to the garden at the rear of the Noordeinde Palace. In that palace garden Constantijn Huygens often strolled as a child with Louise de Coligny, the widow of William of Orange, murdered in 1584, whose Father Christiaan Huygens served as secretary. This ‘Koningspoort’ with its old black ceiling beams forms a fitting frame for the winding Oude Molstraat whose tranquil medieval contours become increasingly blurred in the misty distance and finally disappear altogether. But with every step I take, the mist changes a bit, so that all those beautiful little houses of the Oude Molstraat appear one by one, only to fade away behind me again immediately afterwards. The pale, yellow shrouded streetlights look like real gas lanterns. Such a fog always reminds me of a Sherlock Holmes tale, and so does this journey. After all, my walk is also a scavenger hunt, a search for the exact place where Constantijn Huygens was born on Wednesday September 4, 1596 at 10 o’clock in the evening, as the second son of Christiaan Huygens, secretary to the Council of State, and Susanna Hoefnagel.