The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas (ebook offline reader .txt) 📕

to his face; and this time the shot took effect, blowing out his brains. John de Witt fell to rise no more.

On this, every one of the miscreants, emboldened by his fall, wanted to fire his gun at him, or strike him with blows of the sledge-hammer, or stab him with a knife or swords, every one wanted to draw a drop of blood from the fallen hero, and tear off a shred from his garments.

And after having mangled, and torn, and completely stripped the two brothers, the mob dragged their naked and bloody bodies to an extemporised gibbet, where amateur executioners hung them up by the feet.

Then came the most dastardly scoundrels of all, who not having dared to strike the living flesh, cut the dead in pieces, and then went about the town selling small slices of the bodies of John and Cornelius at ten sous a piece.

We cannot take upon ourselves to say whether, through the almost imperceptible chink of the shutter, the young man witnessed the conclusion of this shocking scene; but at the very moment when they were hanging the two martyrs on the gibbet he passed through the terrible mob, which was too much absorbed in the task, so grateful to its taste, to take any notice of him, and thus he reached unobserved the Tol-Hek, which was still closed.

“Ah! sir,” said the gatekeeper, “do you bring me the key?”

“Yes, my man, here it is.”

“It is most unfortunate that you did not bring me that key only one quarter of an hour sooner,” said the gatekeeper, with a sigh.

“And why that?” asked the other.

“Because I might have opened the gate to Mynheers de Witt; whereas, finding the gate locked, they were obliged to retrace their steps.”

“Gate! gate!” cried a voice which seemed to be that of a man in a hurry.

The Prince, turning round, observed Captain Van Deken.

“Is that you, Captain?” he said. “You are not yet out of the Hague? This is executing my orders very slowly.”

“Monseigneur,” replied the Captain, “this is the third gate at which I have presented myself; the other two were closed.”

“Well, this good man will open this one for you; do it, my friend.”

The last words were addressed to the gatekeeper, who stood quite thunderstruck on hearing Captain Van Deken addressing by the title of Monseigneur this pale young man, to whom he himself had spoken in such a familiar way.

As it were to make up for his fault, he hastened to open the gate, which swung creaking on its hinges.

“Will Monseigneur avail himself of my horse?” asked the Captain.

“I thank you, Captain, I shall use my own steed, which is waiting for me close at hand.”

And taking from his pocket a golden whistle, such as was generally used at that time for summoning the servants, he sounded it with a shrill and prolonged call, on which an equerry on horseback speedily made his appearance, leading another horse by the bridle.

William, without touching the stirrup, vaulted into the saddle of the led horse, and, setting his spurs into its flanks, started off for the Leyden road. Having reached it, he turned round and beckoned to the Captain who was far behind, to ride by his side.

“Do you know,” he then said, without stopping, “that those rascals have killed John de Witt as well as his brother?”

“Alas! Monseigneur,” the Captain answered sadly, “I should like it much better if these two difficulties were still in your Highness’s way of becoming de facto Stadtholder of Holland.”

“Certainly, it would have been better,” said William, “if what did happen had not happened. But it cannot be helped now, and we have had nothing to do with it. Let us push on, Captain, that we may arrive at Alphen before the message which the States-General are sure to send to me to the camp.”

The Captain bowed, allowed the Prince to ride ahead and, for the remainder of the journey, kept at the same respectful distance as he had done before his Highness called him to his side.

“How I should wish,” William of Orange malignantly muttered to himself, with a dark frown and setting the spurs to his horse, “to see the figure which Louis will cut when he is apprised of the manner in which his dear friends De Witt have been served! Oh thou Sun! thou Sun! as truly as I am called William the Silent, thou Sun, thou hadst best look to thy rays!”

And the young Prince, the relentless rival of the Great King, sped away upon his fiery steed,—this future Stadtholder who had been but the day before very uncertainly established in his new power, but for whom the burghers of the Hague had built a staircase with the bodies of John and Cornelius, two princes as noble as he in the eyes of God and man.