The tumult of Monday night seems to have had the desired effect. When
the Court re-assembled on Ash-Wednesday morning the judges were wide
awake, and one after another in rapid succession the accused were found
guilty and condemned to death. Before, however, the sentences which had
been passed were carried out, it was deemed prudent to change the place
of Maximilian's imprisonment. On more than one occasion he had almost
effected his escape, and the Craenenburg was not thought to be
sufficiently secure. Moreover, it was not roomy enough to accommodate
the numerous retinue of gaolers with which, under the guise of
attendants, it was deemed necessary to surround him. Perhaps too the
burghers wished to spare Maximilian the pain of seeing his friends die.
During the whole period of his captivity they seem to have treated him
with the utmost consideration, regarding him not so much as a criminal
as an amiable but dangerous lunatic, whom, indeed, for the sake of the
public weal, they were bound to put under restraint, but whom, at the
same time, they were no less bound to make as comfortable as possible.
When he passed through the _Grande Place_ on his way to his new prison
and in trembling accents besought the people to see that no harm befell
him, 'have no fear,' they cried, 'we bear you no grudge, your
counsellors alone are to blame,' and the palace to which they led him,
in the _rue St. Jacques_--it had recently been occupied by Jean Gros,
Chancellor of the Golden Fleece--was in all probability hardly less
spacious and no less luxuriously furnished than the Princenhof itself.
[Illustration: KITCHEN IN GRUTHUISE]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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