ons and in the
Latin commentaries and expositions with which he proposed to accompany
the work. The prisoner began with a modest disclaimer, saying that after
the labours of Erasmus and Beza, Maldonatus and Jasenius, there was
little for him to glean. Becoming more enthusiastic as he went on, he
completed a masterly commentary on the Four Evangelists, a work for which
the learned and religious world has ever recognized a kind of debt of
gratitude to the castle of Loevestein, and hailed in him the founder of a
school of manly Biblical criticism.

And thus nearly two years wore away. Spinning his great top for exercise;
soothing his active and prolific brain with Greek tragedy, with Flemish
verse, with jurisprudence, history, theology; creating, expounding,
adorning, by the warmth of his vivid intellect; moving the world, and
doing good to his race from the depths of his stony sepulchre; Hugo
Grotius rose superior to his doom and took captivity captive. The man is
not to be envied who is not moved by so noble an example of great
calamity manfully endured.

The wife of Hoogerbeets, already advanced in years, sickened during the
imprisonment and died at Loevestein after a lingering illness, leaving
six children to the care of her unfortunate husband. Madame de Groot had
not been permitted by the prison authorities to minister to her in
sickness, nor to her children after her death.

Early in the year 1621 Francis Aerssens, Lord of Sommelsdyk, the arch
enemy of Barneveld and of Grotius, was appointed special ambassador to
Paris. The intelligence--although hardly unexpected, for the stratagems
of Aerssens had been completely successful--moved the prisoner deeply. He
felt that this mortal enemy, not glutted with vengeance by the beheading
of the Advocate and the perpetual imprisonment of his friend, would do
his best at the French court to defame and to blacken him. He did what he
could to obviate this danger by urgent letters to friends on whom he
could rely.

At about the same time Muis van Holy, one of the twenty-four
commissioners, not yet satisfied with the misery he had helped to
inflict, informed the States-General that Madame de Groot had been buying
ropes at Gorcum. On his motion a committee was sent to investigate the
matter at Castle Loevestein, where it was believed that the ropes had
been concealed for the purpose of enabling Grotius to make his escape
from prison.

Lieutenant Deventer had heard nothing of t