ht therefore to sit in
judgment upon me."

The clergymen replied that the twenty-four judges who had tried the case
were no children and were conscientious men; that it was no small thing
to condemn a man, and that they would have to answer it before the
Supreme Judge of all.

"I console myself," he answered, "in the Lord my God, who knows all
hearts and shall judge all men. God is just.

"They have not dealt with me," he continued, "as according to law and
justice they were bound to deal. They have taken away from me my own
sovereign lords and masters and deposed them. To them alone I was
responsible. In their place they have put many of my enemies who were
never before in the government, and almost all of whom are young men who
have not seen much or read much. I have seen and read much, and know that
from such examples no good can follow. After my death they will learn for
the first time what governing means."

"The twenty-four judges are nearly all of them my enemies. What they have
reproached me with, I have been obliged to hear. I have appealed against
these judges, but it has been of no avail. They have examined me in
piecemeal, not in statesmanlike fashion. The proceedings against me have
been much too hard. I have frequently requested to see the notes of my
examination as it proceeded, and to confer upon it with aid and counsel
of friends, as would be the case in all lands governed by law. The
request was refused. During this long and wearisome affliction and misery
I have not once been allowed to speak to my wife and children. These are
indecent proceedings against a man seventy-two years of age, who has
served his country faithfully for three-and-forty years. I bore arms with
the volunteers at my own charges at the siege of Haarlem and barely
escaped with life."

It was not unnatural that the aged statesman's thoughts should revert in
this supreme moment to the heroic scenes in which he had been an actor
almost a half-century before. He could not but think with bitterness of
those long past but never forgotten days when he, with other patriotic
youths, had faced the terrible legions of Alva in defence of the
Fatherland, at a time when the men who were now dooming him to a
traitor's death were unborn, and who, but for his labours, courage,
wisdom, and sacrifices, might have never had a Fatherland to serve, or a
judgment-seat on which to pronounce his condemnation.

Not in a spirit of fretfulness, but wit