The following was the sequence of events: About six weeks before, John De Witt spent a part of the night in considering affairs of state in his cabinet at the palace of the States General. Towards two o'clock in the morning he left for home, preceded by a valet bearing a torch. Unexpectedly a band of men, armed with swords and knives, leaped from ambush and fell upon him. He received a saber cut over the neck; although unarmed he struggled bravely and received three more wounds, the last of which was so serious that he fell down upon the pavement. Believing him dead the assassins took to their heels. De Witt succeeded in rising to his feet and reaching his residence. The assassins were four in number--the two brothers Van der Graeff, Adolf Borrebugh, the Post Office Commissioner of Maestricht, and Cornelius De Bruyn, an officer in The Hague militia. Only one of the two Van der Graeff brothers could be arrested. The other brother and his two accomplices succeeded in fleeing to a place of safety--the camp of the young William of Orange, who was appointed commandant of the land forces when the war broke out against France and England. The Prince was summoned to deliver the murderous assailants of John De Witt. He refused. From that moment suspicions of William of Orange's complicity in the crime gathered against him. Only he and his party had an interest in the death of John De Witt, who, notwithstanding the disorder that the government was thrown into by the misfortunes of the war, was striving to avert the dangers with which the Prince of Orange threatened the Republic from within, while Louis XIV was attacking it from without. But it was not enough for the Orangemen to have armed assassins against John De Witt; his brother--Cornelius De Witt, the _ruart_ of Putten--was also to be disposed of. A horrible scheme was concocted. Notwithstanding his high office of Grand Pensionary of Holland, John De Witt, a modest man in his tastes, lived with the utmost simplicity, seeking in the company of his wife and his two daughters Agnes and Mary sweet distractions from the cares that weigh upon a statesman. At the period of this narrative he was close to his forty-eighth year. His tall stature, his kind yet grave face, his thoughtful mien, imparted to him an imposing appearance. On this occasion he was writing, alone in his cabinet, a spacious room the walls of which were concealed behind long shelves loaded with books. Above the mantlepiece hung the picture of the father of the two De Witts--an austere face, painted after the manner of Rembrandt. A table, heaped up with papers, stood in the embrasure of a tall window with little square panes of glass held in a lozenge-work of lead, on either side of which were shelves with instruments of physics; for the Grand Pensionary was, like his brother, a lover of the sciences.