Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland : with a view of the primary causes and movements of the Thirty Years' War, 1619-23 — John Shaqi
Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland : with a view of the primary causes and movements of the Thirty Years' War, 1619-23Motley, John Lothrop
History
Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland : with a view of the primary causes and movements of the Thirty Years' War, 1619-23
Motley, John Lothrop
Oldenbarnevelt, Johan van, 1547-1619; Thirty Years' War, 1618-1648
"Open the chest! I am not dead, but did not at first recognize your
voice."
The lock was instantly unfastened, the lid thrown open, and Grotius arose
in his linen clothing, like a dead man from his coffin.
The dame instantly accompanied the two through a trapdoor into an upper
room.
Grotius asked her if she was always so deadly pale.
"No," she replied, "but I am frightened to see you here. My lord is no
common person. The whole world is talking of you. I fear this will
cause the loss of all my property and perhaps bring my husband into
prison in your place."
Grotius rejoined: "I made my prayers to God before as much as this had
been gained, and I have just been uttering fervent thanks to Him for my
deliverance so far as it has been effected. But if the consequences are
to be as you fear, I am ready at once to get into the chest again and be
carried back to prison."
But she answered, "No; whatever comes of it, we have you here and will do
all that we can to help you on."
Grotius being faint from his sufferings, the lady brought him a glass of
Spanish wine, but was too much flustered to find even a cloak or shawl to
throw over him. Leaving him sitting there in his very thin attire, just
as he had got out of the chest, she went to the front warehouse to call
her husband. But he prudently declined to go to his unexpected guest.
It would be better in the examination sure to follow, he said, for him to
say with truth that he had not seen him and knew nothing of the escape,
from first to last.
Grotius entirely approved of the answer when told to him. Meantime
Madame Daatselaer had gone to her brother-in-law van der Veen, a clothier
by trade, whom she found in his shop talking with an officer of the
Loevestein garrison. She whispered in the clothier's ear, and he, making
an excuse to the officer, followed her home at once. They found Grotius
sitting where he had been left. Van der Veen gave him his hand, saying:
"Sir, you are the man of whom the whole country is talking?"
"Yes, here I am," was the reply, "and I put myself in your hands--"
"There isn't a moment to lose," replied the clothier. "We must help you
away at once."
He went immediately in search of one John Lambertsen, a man in whom he
knew he could confide, a Lutheran in religion, a master-mason by
occupation. He found him on a scaffold against the gable-end of a house,
working at his trade.
He told him that there was a good deed to be done which he could do
better than any man, that his conscience would never reproach him for it,
and that he would at the same time earn no trifling reward.
He begged the mason to procure a complete dress as for a journeyman, and
to follow him to the house of his brother-in-law Daatselaer.
Lambertsen soon made his appearance with the doublet, trunk-hose, and
shoes of a bricklayer, together with trowel and measuring-rod. He was
informed who his new journeyman was to be, and Grotius at once put on the
disguise.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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