Stadholder could offer.

The scheme, thus mapped out, was submitted to Stoutenburg, who gave it
his approval after suggesting a few amendments. The document was then
burnt. It was estimated that twenty men would be needed for the job, and
that to pay them handsomely would require about 6000 guilders.

The expenses and other details of the infamous plot were discussed as
calmly as if it had been an industrial or commercial speculation. But
6000 guilders was an immense sum to raise, and the Seigneur de
Stoutenburg was a beggar. His associates were as forlorn as himself, but
his brother-in-law, the ex-Ambassador van der Myle, was living at
Beverwyk under the supervision of the police, his property not having
been confiscated. Stoutenburg paid him a visit, accompanied by the
Reverend Slatius, in hopes of getting funds from him, but at the first
obscure hint of the infamous design van der Myle faced them with such
looks, gestures, and words of disgust and indignation that the murderous
couple recoiled, the son of Barneveld saying to the expreacher: "Let us
be off, Slaet,'tis a mere cur. Nothing is to be made of him."

The other son of Barneveld, the Seigneur de Groeneveld, had means and
credit. His brother had darkly hinted to him the necessity of getting rid
of Maurice, and tried to draw him into the plot. Groeneveld, more
unstable than water, neither repelled nor encouraged these advances. He
joined in many conversations with Stoutenburg, van Dyk, and Korenwinder,
but always weakly affected not to know what they were driving at. "When
we talk of business," said van Dyk to him one day, "you are always
turning off from us and from the subject. You had better remain." Many
anonymous letters were sent to him, calling on him to strike for
vengeance on the murderer of his father, and for the redemption of his
native land and the Remonstrant religion from foul oppression.

At last yielding to the persuasions and threats of his fierce younger
brother, who assured him that the plot would succeed, the government be
revolutionized, and that then all property would be at the mercy of the
victors, he agreed to endorse certain bills which Korenwinder undertook
to negotiate. Nothing could be meaner, more cowardly, and more murderous
than the proceedings of the Seigneur de Groeneveld. He seems to have felt
no intense desire of vengeance upon Maurice, which certainly would not
have been unnatural, but he was willing to supply money for