n the night-time into Diederic's chamber, and shot his master
dead while asleep: he was preparing to serve Cornelius Grotius in the
same manner, but he was awake: he happened to be employed in composing
a Latin epigram. On hearing the shot, he took a pistol which lay on a
chair by his bed side, and seeing the murderer advance softly to him (it
was moon-light) he fired, and laid him flat on the floor: the people of
the inn got up on the noise, and delivered the villain, who was
dangerously wounded, into the hands of justice, and he was broke on the
wheel.

Hugo Grotius had also three daughters, Frances, Mary, and Cornelia;
Frances, the youngest, was born in October, 1626, before her time, her
mother being delivered of her in the eighth month: accordingly this
young person was short-lived, for she died in the beginning of the year
1628. Mary, his second daughter, died at Paris in the month of March,
1635, of the fatigue and cold she received in her journey to that city.
Grotius informed his father of her death by a letter[772] dated March
23, 1635, in which he tells him she died almost without pain, and with a
deep sense of religion. "My wife and I, says he, bear this misfortune
like people accustomed to adversity: besides, why should we call her
death a misfortune? has not God a right to take back what he gave? and
ought not we to flatter ourselves that she is arrived at that happy
state, which the young ought to long after as much as the old? We are
delivered from the care of procuring a husband for her: perhaps we
should have had much difficulty to find one that would have been
agreeable to her and to all her family: and even if we should have found
one that pleased us all at first, would there not have been room to
apprehend that he had concealed his true character for a time, and that
he would afterwards make her unhappy? She is now delivered from the
pains of bearing children, and bringing them up. More happy than her
mother, she will not see judges incensed against her husband, because he
is innocent: she will not be obliged to shut herself up in prison for
her husband; nor to lead a wandering life to accompany him. Let us
congratulate her that God has taken her out of the world before she knew
too much of the evil or what are called the good things of it. Let us
congratulate ourselves on her having lived with us as long as life was
agreeable to her, and free from any mixture of bitterness. What is there
at present