ion that he aspired to the sovereignty or to more
authority in the country. Ever since the year 1600 I have felt this fear
and have tried that these apprehensions might be rightly understood."

While Walaeus had been absent, the Reverend Jean la Motte (or Lamotius)
and another clergyman of the Hague had come to the prisoner's apartment.
La Motte could not look upon the Advocate's face without weeping, but the
others were more collected. Conversation now ensued among the four; the
preachers wishing to turn the doomed statesman's thought to the
consolations of religion.

But it was characteristic of the old lawyer's frame of mind that even now
he looked at the tragical position in which he found himself from a
constitutional and controversial point of view. He was perfectly calm and
undaunted at the awful fate so suddenly and unexpectedly opened before
his eyes, but he was indignant at what he esteemed the ignorance,
injustice, and stupidity of the sentence to be pronounced against him.

"I am ready enough to die," he said to the three clergymen, "but I cannot
comprehend why I am to die. I have done nothing except in obedience to
the laws and privileges of the land and according to my oath, honour, and
conscience."

"These judges," he continued, "come in a time when other maxims prevail
in the State than those of my day. They have no right 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 ha