and sang it with his servant and door-keeper.

From the date of this fast-day Barneveld looked upon the result of his
trial as likely to be serious.

Many clergymen refused or objected to comply with the terms of this
declaration. Others conformed with it greedily, and preached lengthy
thanksgiving sermons, giving praise to God that, He had confounded the
devices of the ambitious and saved the country from the "blood bath"
which they had been preparing for it.

The friends of Barneveld became alarmed at the sinister language of this
proclamation, in which for the first time allusions had been made to a
forthcoming sentence against the accused.

Especially the staunch and indefatigable du Maurier at once addressed
himself again to the States-General. De Boississe had returned to France,
having found that the government of a country torn, weakened, and
rendered almost impotent by its own internecine factions, was not likely
to exert any very potent influence on the fate of the illustrious
prisoner.

The States had given him to understand that they were wearied with his
perpetual appeals, intercessions, and sermons in behalf of mercy. They
made him feel in short that Lewis XIII. and Henry IV. were two entirely
different personages.

Du Maurier however obtained a hearing before the Assembly on the 1st May,
where he made a powerful and manly speech in presence of the Prince,
urging that the prisoners ought to be discharged unless they could be
convicted of treason, and that the States ought to show as much deference
to his sovereign as they had always done to Elizabeth of England. He made
a personal appeal to Prince Maurice, urging upon him how much it would
redound to his glory if he should now in generous and princely fashion
step forward in behalf of those by whom he deemed himself to have been
personally offended.

His speech fell upon ears hardened against such eloquence and produced no
effect.

Meantime the family of Barneveld, not yet reduced to despair, chose to
take a less gloomy view of the proclamation. Relying on the innocence of
the great statesman, whose aims, in their firm belief, had ever been for
the welfare and glory of his fatherland, and in whose heart there had
never been kindled one spark of treason, they bravely expected his
triumphant release from his long and, as they deemed it, his iniquitous
imprisonment.

On this very 1st of May, in accordance with ancient custom, a may-pole
was erecte