He had with him the two clerks, M. Bacherus and M. Ouvenaller, and his faithful servant, Van den Wissel, who had nearly been slain in Van der Graef’s attack on his master.
It was a warm, lovely morning; little flakes of gold lay in the ripples of the Vyver, and there was a shimmering of light and shade in the chestnuts and elms.
John de Witt noticed nothing warranted to rouse the fears his sister and daughters entertained.
There were the women going to market, the farmers drawn by their dogs in their little painted carts, the usual passers-by; one saluted him, for the rest he was unnoticed.
He passed the spot where John Van Olden Barnenveldt had been executed, and thought of it, as he had continually done of late when he crossed the Plaats.
Many times had he looked at the old gate prison, now with a horrid interest and a painful shrinking.
The plain brick building, with its high, tiled roof pierced with two gabled windows built over the low, dark arch, above which the arms of Holland were set, had always been a place of awe to him, because it had witnessed the imprisonment and agonies of those early Reformers who had been martyred by the Inquisition, but now its association made him quiver to his heart.
Cornelius had been tortured here … yesterday.
De Witt went very pale as he traversed the passage of the arch.