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Page 24
The officer saw this sign of compassion, and, wishing to
avail himself of this softened tone of his feelings,
continued, --
"Come, come, Monseigneur, for here they are also going to
murder the Grand Pensionary."
But the young man had already opened his eyes again.
"To be sure," he said. "These people are really implacable.
It does no one good to offend them."
"Monseigneur," said the officer, "may not one save this poor
man, who has been your Highness's instructor? If there be
any means, name it, and if I should perish in the attempt
---- "
William of Orange -- for he it was -- knit his brows in a
very forbidding manner, restrained the glance of gloomy
malice which glistened in his half-closed eye, and answered,
--
"Captain Van Deken, I request you to go and look after my
troops, that they may be armed for any emergency."
"But am I to leave your Highness here, alone, in the
presence of all these murderers?"
"Go, and don't you trouble yourself about me more than I do
myself," the Prince gruffly replied.
The officer started off with a speed which was much less
owing to his sense of military obedience than to his
pleasure at being relieved from the necessity of witnessing
the shocking spectacle of the murder of the other brother.
He had scarcely left the room, when John -- who, with an
almost superhuman effort, had reached the stone steps of a
house nearly opposite that where his former pupil concealed
himself -- began to stagger under the blows 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
clenched fist.
Another showed to him his bloody hands; for this fellow had
ripped open Cornelius and disembowelled him, and was now
hastening to the spot in order not to lose the opportunity
of serving the Grand Pensionary in the same manner, whilst
they were dragging the dead body of Cornelius to the gibbet.
John uttered a cry of agony and grief, and put one of his
hands before his eyes.
"Oh, you close your eyes, do you?" said one of the soldiers
of the burgher guard; "well, I shall open them for you."
And saying this he stabbed him with his pike in the face,
and the blood spurted forth.
"My brother!" cried John de Witt, trying to see through the
stream of blood which blinded him, what had become of
Cornelius; "my brother, my brother!"
"Go and run after him!" bellowed another murderer, putting
his musket to his temples and pulling the trigger.
But the gun did not go off.
The fellow then turned his musket round, and, taking it by
the barrel with both hands, struck John de Witt down with
the butt-end. John staggered and fell down at his feet, but,
raising himself with a last effort, he once more called out,
--
"My brother!" with a voice so full of anguish that the young
man opposite closed the shutter.
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