Goth had consented,
saying that nothing could be more easily done, and that he would
undertake to poison him in a dish of eels, of which he knew him to be
particularly fond. The Frenchman was liberated with this understanding,
but, being very much the friend of Orange, straightway told him the
whole story and remained ever afterward a faithful servant of the
states. It is to be presumed that he excused the treachery to which he
owed his escape from prison on the ground that faith was no more to be
kept with murderers than with heretics.

Within two years there had been five distinct attempts to assassinate
the Prince, all of them with the privity of the Spanish government. A
sixth was soon to follow. In the summer of 1584 William of Orange was
residing at Delft, where his wife, Louisa de Coligny, had given birth,
in the preceding winter, to a son, afterward the celebrated stadtholder
Frederick Henry. The child had received these names from his two
godfathers, the kings of Denmark and of Navarre, and his baptism had
been celebrated with much rejoicing on June 12th, in the place of his
birth.

It was a quiet, cheerful, yet somewhat drowsy little city, that ancient
burgh of Delft. The placid canals by which it was intersected in every
direction were all planted with whispering, umbrageous rows of limes and
poplars, and along these watery highways the traffic of the place glided
so noiselessly that the town seemed the abode of silence and
tranquillity. The streets were clean and airy, the houses well built,
the whole aspect of the place thriving.

One of the principal thoroughfares was called the Old Delft Street. It
was shaded on both sides by lime-trees, which in that midsummer season
covered the surface of the canal which flowed between them with their
light and fragrant blossoms. On one side of this street was the "Old
Kirk," a plain, antique structure of brick, with lancet windows, and
with a tall, slender tower, which inclined, at a very considerable
angle, toward a house upon the other side of the canal. That house was
the mansion of William the Silent. It stood directly opposite the
church, being separated by a spacious court-yard from the street, while
the stables and other offices in the rear extended to the city wall. A
narrow lane, opening out of Delft Street, ran along the side of the
house and court in the direction of the ramparts. The house was a plain,
two-storied edifice of brick, with red-tiled roof, a