Netherlands -- History -- 1648-1714 -- Fiction; Tulip Mania, 1634-1637 -- Fiction; Witt, Johan de, 1625-1672 -- Fiction
John looked. The whole mass of the populace from the Buytenhof appeared
at the extremity of the street along which the carriage was to proceed,
and its stream moved roaring and rapid, as if lashed on by a hurricane.
“Stop and get off,” said John to the coachman; “it is useless to go any
farther; we are lost!”
“Here they are! here they are!” five hundred voices were crying at the
same time.
“Yes, here they are, the traitors, the murderers, the assassins!”
answered the men who were running after the carriage to the people who
were coming to meet it. The former carried in their arms the bruised
body of one of their companions, who, trying to seize the reins of the
horses, had been trodden down by them.
This was the object over which the two brothers had felt their carriage
pass.
The coachman stopped, but, however strongly his master urged him, he
refused to get off and save himself.
In an instant the carriage was hemmed in between those who followed and
those who met it. It rose above the mass of moving heads like a floating
island. But in another instant it came to a dead stop. A blacksmith had
with his hammer struck down one of the horses, which fell in the traces.
At this moment, the shutter of a window opened, and disclosed the sallow
face and the dark eyes of the young man, who with intense interest
watched the scene which was preparing. Behind him appeared the head of
the officer, almost as pale as himself.
“Good heavens, Monseigneur, what is going on there?” whispered the
officer.
“Something very terrible, to a certainty,” replied the other.
“Don’t you see, Monseigneur, they are dragging the Grand Pensionary from
the carriage, they strike him, they tear him to pieces!”
“Indeed, these people must certainly be prompted by a most violent
indignation,” said the young man, with the same impassible tone which
he had preserved all along.
“And here is Cornelius, whom they now likewise drag out of the
carriage,--Cornelius, who is already quite broken and mangled by the
torture. Only look, look!”
“Indeed, it is Cornelius, and no mistake.”
The officer uttered a feeble cry, and turned his head away; the brother
of the Grand Pensionary, before having set foot on the ground, whilst
still on the bottom step of the carriage, was struck down with an iron
bar which broke his skull. He rose once more, but immediately fell
again.
Some fellows then seized him by the feet, and dragged him into the
crowd, into the middle of which one might have followed his bloody
track, and he was soon closed in among the savage yells of malignant
exultation.
The young man--a thing which would have been thought impossible--grew
even paler than before, and his eyes were for a moment veiled behind the
lids.
The officer saw this sign of compassion, and, wishing to avail himself
of this softened tone of his feelings, continued,--
“Come, come, Monseigneur, for here they are also going to murder the
Grand Pensionary.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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