Cornelius and John, after driving along the pond, had taken the mainstreet, which leads to the Tol-Hek, giving directions to the coachman toslacken his pace, in order not to excite any suspicion.
But when, on having proceeded half-way down that street, the man feltthat he had left the prison and death behind, and before him there waslife and liberty, he neglected every precaution, and set his horses offat a gallop.
All at once he stopped.
"What is the matter?" asked John, putting his head out of the coachwindow.
"Oh, my masters!" cried the coachman, "it is----"
Terror choked the voice of the honest fellow.
"Well, say what you have to say!" urged the Grand Pensionary.
"The gate is closed, that's what it is."
"How is this? It is not usual to close the gate by day."
"Just look!"
John de Witt leaned out of the window, and indeed saw that the man wasright.
"Never mind, but drive on," said John, "I have with me the order for thecommutation of the punishment, the gate-keeper will let us through."
The carriage moved along, but it was evident that the driver was nolonger urging his horses with the same degree of confidence.
Moreover, as John de Witt put his head out of the carriage window, hewas seen and recognized by a brewer, who, being behind his companions,was just shutting his door in all haste to join them at the Buytenhof.He uttered a cry of surprise, and ran after two other men before him,whom he overtook about a hundred yards farther on, and told them what hehad seen. The three men then stopped, looking after the carriage, beinghowever not yet quite sure as to whom it contained.
The carriage in the meanwhile arrived at the Tol-Hek.
"Open!" cried the coachman.
"Open!" echoed the gatekeeper, from the threshold of his lodge; "it'sall very well to say 'Open!' but what am I to do it with?"
"With the key, to be sure!" said the coachman.
"With the key! Oh, yes! but if you have not got it?"
"How is that? Have not you got the key?" asked the coachman.
"No, I haven't."
"What has become of it?"
"Well, they have taken it from me."
"Who?"
"Some one, I dare say, who had a mind that no one should leave thetown."
"My good man," said the Grand Pensionary, putting out his head from thewindow, and risking all for gaining all; "my good man, it is for me,John de Witt, and for my brother Cornelius, who I am taking away intoexile."
"Oh, Mynheer de Witt! I am indeed very much grieved," said thegatekeeper, rushing towards the carriage; "but, upon my sacred word, thekey has been taken from me."
"When?"
"This morning."
"By whom?"
"By a pale and thin young man, of about twenty-two."
"And wherefore did you give it up to him?"
"Because he showed me an order, signed and sealed."
"By whom?"
"By the gentlemen of the Town-hall."
"Well, then," said Cornelius calmly, "our doom seems to be fixed."
"Do you know whether the same precaution has been taken at the othergates?"
"I do not."
"Now then," said John to the coachman, "God commands man to do all thatis in his power to preserve his life; go, and drive to another gate."
And whilst the servant was turning round the vehicle the GrandPensionary said to the gatekeeper,--
"Take our thanks for your good intentions; the will must count for thedeed; you had the will to save us, and that, in the eyes of the Lord, isas if you had succeeded in doing so."
"Alas!" said the gatekeeper, "do you see down there?"
"Drive at a gallop through that group," John called out to the coachman,"and take the street on the left; it is our only chance."
The group which John alluded to had, for its nucleus, those three menwhom we left looking after the carriage, and who, in the meanwhile, hadbeen joined by seven or eight others.
These new-comers evidently meant mischief with regard to the carriage.
When they saw the horses galloping down upon them, they placedthemselves across the street, brandishing cudgels in their hands, andcalling out,--
"Stop! stop!"
The coachman, on his side, lashed his horses into increased speed, untilthe coach and the men encountered.
The brothers De Witt, enclosed within the body of the carriage, were notable to see anything; but they felt a severe shock, occasioned by therearing of the horses. The whole vehicle for a moment shook and stopped;but immediately after, passing over something round and elastic, whichseemed to be the body of a prostrate man set off again amidst a volleyof the fiercest oaths.
"Alas!" said Cornelius, "I am afraid we have hurt some one."
"Gallop! gallop!" called John.
But, notwithstanding this order, the coachman suddenly came to a stop.
"Now, then, what is the matter again?" asked John.
"Look there!" said the coachman.
John looked. The whole mass of the populace from the Buytenhof appearedat the extremity of the street along which the carriage was to proceed,and its stream moved roaring and rapid, as if lashed on by a hurricane.
"Stop and get off," said John to the coachman; "it is useless to go anyfarther; we are lost!"
"Here they are! here they are!" five hundred voices were crying at thesame time.
"Yes, here they are, the traitors, the murderers, the assassins!"answered the men who were running after the carriage to the people whowere coming to meet it. The former carried in their arms the bruisedbody of one of their companions, who, trying to seize the reins of thehorses, had been trodden down by them.
This was the object over which the two brothers had felt their carriagepass.
The coachman stopped, but, however strongly his master urged him, herefused to get off and save himself.
In an instant the carriage was hemmed in between those who followed andthose who met it. It rose above the mass of moving heads like a floatingisland. But in another instant it came to a dead stop. A blacksmith hadwith his hammer struck down one of the horses, which fell in the traces.
At this moment, the shutter of a window opened, and disclosed the sallowface and the dark eyes of the young man, who with intense interestwatched the scene which was preparing. Behind him appeared the head ofthe officer, almost as pale as himself.
"Good heavens, Monseigneur, what is going on there?" whispered theofficer.
"Something very terrible, to a certainty," replied the other.
"Don't you see, Monseigneur, they are dragging the Grand Pensionary fromthe carriage, they strike him, they tear him to pieces!"
"Indeed, these people must certainly be prompted by a most violentindignation," said the young man, with the same impassible tone whichhe had preserved all along.
"And here is Cornelius, whom they now likewise drag out of thecarriage,--Cornelius, who is already quite broken and mangled by thetorture. Only look, look!"
"Indeed, it is Cornelius, and no mistake."
The officer uttered a feeble cry, and turned his head away; the brotherof the Grand Pensionary, before having set foot on the ground, whilststill on the bottom step of the carriage, was struck down with an ironbar which broke his skull. He rose once more, but immediately fellagain.
Some fellows then seized him by the feet, and dragged him into thecrowd, into the middle of which one might have followed his bloodytrack, and he was soon closed in among the savage yells of malignantexultation.
The young man--a thing which would have been thought impossible--greweven paler than before, and his eyes were for a moment veiled behind thelids.
The officer saw this sign of compassion, and, wishing to avail himselfof this softened tone of his feelings, continued,--
"Come, come, Monseigneur, for here they are also going to murder theGrand Pensionary."
But the young man had already opened his eyes again.
"To be sure," he said. "These people are really implacable. It does noone good to offend them."
"Monseigneur," said the officer, "may not one save this poor man, whohas been your Highness's instructor? If there be any means, name it, andif I should perish in the attempt----"
William of Orange--for he it was--knit his brows in a very forbiddingmanner, restrained the glance of gloomy malice which glistened in hishalf-closed eye, and answered,--
"Captain Van Deken, I request you to go and look after my troops, thatthey may be armed for any emergency."
"But am I to leave your Highness here, alone, in the presence of allthese murderers?"
"Go, and don't you trouble yourself about me more than I do myself," thePrince gruffly replied.
The officer started off with a speed which was much less owing to hissense of military obedience than to his pleasure at being relieved fromthe necessity of witnessing the shocking spectacle of the murder of theother brother.
He had scarcely left the room, when John--who, with an almost superhumaneffort, had reached the stone steps of a house nearly opposite thatwhere his former pupil concealed himself--began to stagger under theblows which were inflicted on him from all sides, calling out,--
"My brother! where is my brother?"
One of the ruffians knocked off his hat with a blow of his clenchedfist.
Another showed to him his bloody hands; for this fellow had ripped openCornelius and disembowelled him, and was now hastening to the spot inorder not to lose the opportunity of serving the Grand Pensionary in thesame manner, whilst they were dragging the dead body of Cornelius to thegibbet.
John uttered a cry of agony and grief, and put one of his hands beforehis eyes.
"Oh, you close your eyes, do you?" said one of the soldiers of theburgher guard; "well, I shall open them for you."
And saying this he stabbed him with his pike in the face, and the bloodspurted forth.
"My brother!" cried John de Witt, trying to see through the stream ofblood which blinded him, what had become of Cornelius; "my brother, mybrother!"
"Go and run after him!" bellowed another murderer, putting his musket tohis temples and pulling the trigger.
But the gun did not go off.
The fellow then turned his musket round, and, taking it by the barrelwith both hands, struck John de Witt down with the butt-end. Johnstaggered and fell down at his feet, but, raising himself with a lasteffort, he once more called out,--
"My brother!" with a voice so full of anguish that the young manopposite closed the shutter.
There remained little more to see; a third murderer fired a pistol withthe muzzle to his face; and this time the shot took effect, blowing outhis brains. John de Witt fell to rise no more.
On this, every one of the miscreants, emboldened by his fall, wanted tofire his gun at him, or strike him with blows of the sledge-hammer,or stab him with a knife or swords, every one wanted to draw a drop ofblood from the fallen hero, and tear off a shred from his garments.
And after having mangled, and torn, and completely stripped thetwo brothers, the mob dragged their naked and bloody bodies to anextemporised gibbet, where amateur executioners hung them up by thefeet.
Then came the most dastardly scoundrels of all, who not having dared tostrike the living flesh, cut the dead in pieces, and then went aboutthe town selling small slices of the bodies of John and Cornelius at tensous a piece.
We cannot take upon ourselves to say whether, through the almostimperceptible chink of the shutter, the young man witnessed theconclusion of this shocking scene; but at the very moment when they werehanging the two martyrs on the gibbet he passed through the terriblemob, which was too much absorbed in the task, so grateful to its taste,to take any notice of him, and thus he reached unobserved the Tol-Hek,which was still closed.
"Ah! sir," said the gatekeeper, "do you bring me the key?"
"Yes, my man, here it is."
"It is most unfortunate that you did not bring me that key only onequarter of an hour sooner," said the gatekeeper, with a sigh.
"And why that?" asked the other.
"Because I might have opened the gate to Mynheers de Witt; whereas,finding the gate locked, they were obliged to retrace their steps."
"Gate! gate!" cried a voice which seemed to be that of a man in a hurry.
The Prince, turning round, observed Captain Van Deken.
"Is that you, Captain?" he said. "You are not yet out of the Hague? Thisis executing my orders very slowly."
"Monseigneur," replied the Captain, "this is the third gate at which Ihave presented myself; the other two were closed."
"Well, this good man will open this one for you; do it, my friend."
The last words were addressed to the gatekeeper, who stood quitethunderstruck on hearing Captain Van Deken addressing by the title ofMonseigneur this pale young man, to whom he himself had spoken in such afamiliar way.
As it were to make up for his fault, he hastened to open the gate, whichswung creaking on its hinges.
"Will Monseigneur avail himself of my horse?" asked the Captain.
"I thank you, Captain, I shall use my own steed, which is waiting for meclose at hand."
And taking from his pocket a golden whistle, such as was generally usedat that time for summoning the servants, he sounded it with a shrilland prolonged call, on which an equerry on horseback speedily made hisappearance, leading another horse by the bridle.
William, without touching the stirrup, vaulted into the saddle of theled horse, and, setting his spurs into its flanks, started off for theLeyden road. Having reached it, he turned round and beckoned to theCaptain who was far behind, to ride by his side.
"Do you know," he then said, without stopping, "that those rascals havekilled John de Witt as well as his brother?"
"Alas! Monseigneur," the Captain answered sadly, "I should like it muchbetter if these two difficulties were still in your Highness's way ofbecoming de facto Stadtholder of Holland."
"Certainly, it would have been better," said William, "if what didhappen had not happened. But it cannot be helped now, and we have hadnothing to do with it. Let us push on, Captain, that we may arrive atAlphen before the message which the States-General are sure to send tome to the camp."
The Captain bowed, allowed the Prince to ride ahead and, for theremainder of the journey, kept at the same respectful distance as he haddone before his Highness called him to his side.
"How I should wish," William of Orange malignantly muttered to himself,with a dark frown and setting the spurs to his horse, "to see the figurewhich Louis will cut when he is apprised of the manner in which his dearfriends De Witt have been served! Oh thou Sun! thou Sun! as truly asI am called William the Silent, thou Sun, thou hadst best look to thyrays!"
And the young Prince, the relentless rival of the Great King, sped awayupon his fiery steed,--this future Stadtholder who had been but the daybefore very uncertainly established in his new power, but for whom theburghers of the Hague had built a staircase with the bodies of John andCornelius, two princes as noble as he in the eyes of God and man.