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 table
piled with papers, surrounded by clerks with bags full of documents and
with a library of authorities and precedents duly marked and dog's-eared
and ready to their hands, while his only library and chronicle lay in his
brain. From day to day, with frequent intermissions, he was led down
through the narrow turret-stairs to a wide chamber on the floor
immediately below his prison, where a temporary tribunal had been
arranged for the special commission.

There had been an inclination at first on the part of his judges to treat
him as a criminal, and to require him to answer, standing, to the
interrogatories propounded to him. But as the terrible old man advanced
into the room, leaning on his staff, and surveying them with the air of
haughty command habitual to him, they shrank before his glance; several
involuntarily, rising uncovered, to salute him and making way for him to
the fireplace about which many were standing that wintry morning.

He was thenceforth always accommodated with a seat while he listened to
and answered 'ex tempore' the elaborate series of interrogatories which
had been prepared to convict him.

Nearly seven months he had sat with no charges brought against him. This
was in itself a gross violation of the laws of the land, for according to
all the ancient charters of Holland it was provided that accusation
should follow within six weeks of arrest, or that the prisoner should go
free. But the arrest itself was so gross a violation of law that respect
for it was hardly to be expected in the subsequent proceedings. He was a
great officer of the States of Holland. He had been taken under their
especial protection. He was on his way to the High Council. He was in no
sense a subject of the States-General. He was in the discharge of his
official duty. He was doubly and trebly sacre