rom the house. He had dropped his
pistols upon the spot where he had committed the crime, and upon his
person were found a couple of bladders, provided with a piece of pipe,
with which he had intended to assist himself across the moat, beyond
which a horse was waiting for him. He made no effort to deny his
identity, but boldly avowed himself and his deed. He was brought back to
the house, where he immediately underwent a preliminary examination
before the city magistrates. He was afterward subjected to excruciating
tortures; for the fury against the wretch who had destroyed the "father
of the country" was uncontrollable, and William the Silent was no longer
alive to intercede--as he had often done before--in behalf of those who
assailed his life.

The sentence pronounced against the assassin was execrable--a crime
against the memory of the great man whom it professed to avenge. It was
decreed that the right hand of Gerard should be burned off with a
red-hot iron, that his flesh should be torn from his bones with pincers
in six different places, that he should be quartered and disembowelled
alive, that his heart should be torn from his bosom and flung in his
face, and that, finally, his head should be taken off. Not even his
horrible crime, with its endless consequences, not the natural frenzy of
indignation which it had excited, could justify this savage decree, to
rebuke which the murdered hero might have almost risen from the sleep of
death. The sentence was literally executed on July 14th, the criminal
supporting its horrors with the same astonishing fortitude. So calm were
his nerves, crippled and half roasted as he was ere he mounted the
scaffold, that, when one of the executioners was slightly injured in the
ear by the flying from the handle of the hammer with which he was
breaking the fatal pistol in pieces, as the first step in the
execution--a circumstance which produced a general laugh in the crowd--a
smile was observed upon Balthazar's face in sympathy with the general
hilarity. His lips were seen to move up to the moment when his heart was
thrown in his face. "Then," said a looker-on, "he gave up the ghost."

The reward promised by Philip to the man who should murder Orange was
paid to the heirs of Gerard. Parma informed his sovereign that the "poor
man" had been executed, but that his father and mother were still
living, to whom he recommended the payment of that "merced" which "the
laudable and generous d