g; and secondly, I am not a Hollander, but
a Frenchman, which is more different still. I have to do with no one but
the States, by whom I am paid; let me see an order from them to leave
the place to you, and I shall only be too glad to wheel off in an
instant, as I am confoundedly bored here."

"Yes, yes!" cried a hundred voices; the din of which was immediately
swelled by five hundred others; "let us march to the Town-hall; let us
go and see the deputies! Come along! come along!"

"That's it," Tilly muttered between his teeth, as he saw the most
violent among the crowd turning away; "go and ask for a meanness at
the Town-hall, and you will see whether they will grant it; go, my fine
fellows, go!"

The worthy officer relied on the honour of the magistrates, who, on
their side, relied on his honour as a soldier.

"I say, Captain," the first lieutenant whispered into the ear of the
Count, "I hope the deputies will give these madmen a flat refusal;
but, after all, it would do no harm if they would send us some
reinforcement."

In the meanwhile, John de Witt, whom we left climbing the stairs, after
the conversation with the jailer Gryphus and his daughter Rosa, had
reached the door of the cell, where on a mattress his brother Cornelius
was resting, after having undergone the preparatory degrees of the
torture. The sentence of banishment having been pronounced, there was no
occasion for inflicting the torture extraordinary.

Cornelius was stretched on his couch, with broken wrists and crushed
fingers. He had not confessed a crime of which he was not guilty; and
now, after three days of agony, he once more breathed freely, on being
informed that the judges, from whom he had expected death, were only
condemning him to exile.

Endowed with an iron frame and a stout heart, how would he have
disappointed his enemies if they could only have seen, in the dark cell
of the Buytenhof, his pale face lit up by the smile of the martyr, who
forgets the dross of this earth after having obtained a glimpse of the
bright glory of heaven.

The warden, indeed, had already recovered his full strength, much more
owing to the force of his own strong will than to actual aid; and he was
calculating how long the formalities of the law would still detain him
in prison.

This was just at the very moment when the mingled shouts of the
burgher guard and of the mob were raging against the two brothers, and
threatening Captain Tilly, who served