Outside the Latin Grammar School, where John de Witt had studied the history of his country with a joyous and ambitious heart, and not far from the house of Jacob de Witt, where the Grand Pensionary, in the days when he wore a sword and love-locks, had written French verses to Wendela Van Bicker, the people closed round the Prince and his escort and demanded that he should not leave the town until the magistrates had proclaimed him.
M. Van Beveren murmured something about the Perpetual Edict, upon which one, Henry Dibbets, a Calvinist minister, levelled a gun at his head and shouted to the Prince that he would soon have his father’s offices restored to him.
The Prince himself put the musket aside.
“My friends, I am content,” he said gravely.
The burgomaster, thrust up against the wall of the school, shouted lustily—
“Long live the Prince!”
But the magistrates, still resolved not to yield, hastily invited William to a repast at the Peacock Inn.
“In truth,” said the Prince, regarding them with smiling eyes, “I am a little fatigued.”
The angry crowd demanded if he had been proclaimed Stadtholder.
“Thou old, fat villain!” cried Henry Dibbets to the burgomaster. “Thou art deceiving us! Hast thou brought the Prince here to walk him up and down the town?”