The Grand Pensionary obeyed. The elder de Witt, despite his eighty-two years, still held important offices of state and had the manner of authority.
He seated himself beside his son.
“This must be answered,” he said. He held out a paper in his colourless hand.
“Another pamphlet”—John de Witt’s tone was mournful. “Father, they are distributed openly, under my very eyes. What may one do but scorn them?”
A silence followed. The life of John de Witt had been austere and irreproachable beyond that of any man of his time; yet his father knew that the violence of party hatred was holding him up to the contempt of his fellow-citizens under every vile aspect imaginable.
For twenty years of upright dealing, of pure patriotism, of incessant toil; for an unswerving devotion to his friends and a generous and unchanging policy of conciliation towards his enemies, he was now rewarded by the basest ingratitude from the opponents he had always respected, and with the vilest accusations from the people whom he had so nobly served.
These things were in the mind of Jacob de Witt as he looked at his son, and even the stern resignation taught by their common creed hardly sustained him against these bitter calumnies of his belovèd’s name.
John de Witt was the first to speak.
“Why should we trouble about these things?”
He took the pamphlet from his father’s hand gently, and laid it on the seat between them.