and
imprisoned. His mother visited Maurice to ask his pardon. "Why," said
he, "how is this--you value your son more than your husband! You did
not ask pardon for him." "No," said Barneveldt's widow; "I did not
ask pardon for my husband, because he was innocent; I ask pardon for
my son, because he is guilty."

Prince Maurice never recovered from the error--to put for the moment
no worse epithet to it--of the death of Barneveldt. He had killed
his best counsellor; thenceforward his power diminished; and with
every rebuff he who had abandoned his first adviser complained
that God had abandoned him. Davies sums up the case thus: "The
escutcheon of Maurice is bright with the record of many a deed of
glory; the fabric of his country's greatness raised by his father,
strengthened and beautified by himself; her armies created the masters
of military science to the civilized world; her States the centre and
mainspring of its negotiations; her proud foe reduced to sue humbly
at her feet. But there is one dark, deep stain on which the eye of
posterity, unheeding the surrounding radiance, is constantly fixed:
it is the blood of Barneveldt."

The Binnenhof leads to the Buitenhof, a large open space, the old
gateway to which is the Gevangenpoort prison--scene of another shameful
deed in the history of Holland, the death of John and Cornelius
de Witt. The massacre occurred two hundred and thirty-three years
ago--in 1672. Cornelius de Witt was wrongfully accused of an attempt
to procure the assassination of the Stadtholder, William III. To him,
in his cell in the Gevangenpoort, came, on 22nd August, John de Witt,
late Grand Pensionary, brought hither by a bogus message.

I quote from Davies, who elsewhere makes it clear that (as Dumas says)
William III was privy to the crime: "His friends, fearful of some
treachery, besought him to pause and inquire into the truth of the
summons before he obeyed it; and his only daughter threw herself
at his feet, and implored him with floods of tears not to risk
unnecessarily a life so precious. But his anxiety for his brother,
with whom he had ever lived on terms of the tenderest affection,
proved stronger than their remonstrances; and setting out on foot,
attended by his servant and two secretaries, he hastened to the
prison. On seeing him, Cornelius de Witt exclaimed in astonishment,
'My brother, what do you here?' 'Did you not then send for me?' he
asked; and receiving an answer in the negati