ius die too?" adding,
with a sigh of relief when assured of the contrary, "I should deeply
grieve for that; he is so young and may live to do the State much
service." could he have read those faltering and ungenerous words from one
he so held in his heart, he would have felt them like the stab of Brutus.
Grotius lived to know that there were no such proofs, that the judges did
not dare even allude to the charge in their sentence, and long years
afterwards he drew a picture of the martyred patriot such as one might
have expected from his pen.
But these written words of doubt must have haunted him to his grave.
On the 18th May 1619--on the fifty-first anniversary, as Grotius
remarked, of the condemnation of Egmont and Hoorn by the Blood Tribunal
of Alva--the two remaining victims were summoned to receive their doom.
The Fiscal Sylla, entering de Groot's chamber early in the morning to
conduct him before the judges, informed him that he was not instructed to
communicate the nature of the sentence. "But," he said, maliciously, "you
are aware of what has befallen the Advocate."
"I have heard with my own ears," answered Grotius, "the judgment
pronounced upon Barneveld and upon Ledenberg. Whatever may be my fate, I
have patience to bear it."
The sentence, read in the same place and in the same manner as had been
that upon the Advocate, condemned both Hoogerbeets and Grotius to
perpetual imprisonment.
The course of the trial and the enumeration of the offences were nearly
identical with the leading process which has been elaborately described.
Grotius made no remark whatever in the court-room. On returning to his
chamber he observed that his admissions of facts had been tortured into
confessions of guilt, that he had been tried and sentenced against all
principles and forms of law, and that he had been deprived of what the
humblest criminal could claim, the right of defence and the examination
of testimony. In regard to the penalty against him, he said, there was no
such thing as perpetual imprisonment except in hell. Alluding to the
leading cause of all these troubles, he observed that it was with the
Stadholder and the Advocate as Cato had said of Caesar and Pompey. The
great misery had come not from their being enemies, but from their having
once been friends.
On the night of 5th June the prisoners were taken from their prison in
the Hague and conveyed to the castle of Loevestein.
This fortress, destined t
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