quill concealed in a pear and by other devices. The man who had
governed one of the most important commonwealths of the world for nearly
a generation long--during the same period almost controlling the politics
of Europe--had now been kept in ignorance of the most insignificant
everyday events. During the long summer-heat of the dog-days immediately
succeeding his arrest, and the long, foggy, snowy, icy winter of Holland
which ensued, he had been confined in that dreary garret-room to which he
had been brought when he left his temporary imprisonment in the
apartments of Prince Maurice.

There was nothing squalid in the chamber, nothing specially cruel or
repulsive in the arrangements of his captivity. He was not in fetters,
nor fed upon bread and water. He was not put upon the rack, nor even
threatened with it as Ledenberg had been. He was kept in a mean,
commonplace, meagerly furnished, tolerably spacious room, and he was
allowed the services of his faithful domestic servant John Franken. A
sentinel paced day and night up the narrow corridor before his door. As
spring advanced, the notes of the nightingale came through the
prison-window from the neighbouring thicket. One day John Franken,
opening the window that his master might the better enjoy its song,
exchanged greeting with a fellow-servant in the Barneveld mansion who
happened to be crossing the courtyard. Instantly workmen were sent to
close and barricade the windows, and it was only after earnest
remonstrances and pledges that this resolve to consign the Advocate to
darkness was abandoned.

He was not permitted the help of lawyer, clerk, or man of business. Alone
and from his chamber of bondage, suffering from bodily infirmities and
from the weakness of advancing age, he was compelled to prepare his
defence against a vague, heterogeneous collection of charges, to meet
which required constant reference, not only to the statutes, privileges,
and customs of the country and to the Roman law, but to a thousand minute
incidents out of which the history of the Provinces during the past dozen
years or more had been compounded.

It is true that no man could be more familiar with the science and
practice of the law than he was, while of contemporary history he was
himself the central figure. His biography was the chronicle of his
country. Nevertheless it was a fearful disadvantage for him day by day to
confront two dozen hostile judges comfortably seated at a great tab