“If you will not sign,” she said in despair, “then I must leave you—God help me, I must see to some means of safety for my children.”
The secretary had snatched up a pen, and now came to the bedside and forced it into the Ruard’s fingers.
“Oh, you are a father before you are a citizen!” exclaimed Maria de Witt “This is not perjury—you are absolved by the actions of the others.”
Slowly Cornelius de Witt took up the quill in his feeble fingers.
He bit his full under-lip and his eyes narrowed.
“What will be said of a man who was vanquished by his wife’s tears?” he muttered.
He could scarcely hold the pen.
He looked at his wife—
“Maria, Maria, dost thou think this compliance can save me from the inevitable?”