Nor was this all. _Écoutète_ Peter Metteneye was in constant attendance, as he was in duty bound to be, and at his beck and call were thirty-six servants, who, like their chief, never left the house. But Maximilian knew very well that all this solicitude on the part of Myn Heer Peter was not the outcome of a keen desire to exactly fulfil the obligations of his office, but was rather prompted by fear lest his victim should escape; that his thirty-six servants were in reality thirty-six turnkeys, and that the _Écoutète_ himself was gaoler-in-chief. What wonder that when Antoine de Fontaine came to visit Maximilian in Master Jean Gros's mansion he found him '_fort amaigry et pâle_.'[40] In consenting to quit the Craenenburg Maximilian had removed the last obstacle which might perhaps have prevented or at all events retarded the execution of those of his friends who were prisoners like himself. The day after he left a great scaffold draped in black was erected in the _Grande Place_. Gilbert du Homme, a Norman, erst Burgomaster of the Franc, died first, then came Jan van Nieuwenhove; so battered and weak was he with the torture which he had undergone that they had to give him an armchair in which to await his turn for death. Perhaps the sight of his misery had unnerved the executioner; he struck three times before he succeeded in severing the head from the body. Another man who had been Burgomaster of Bruges perished the same day, Jacob van Dudzeele, Lord of Ghistelle. He had been arrested in the Craenenburg under the very eyes of Maximilian, and to the last he protested his innocence. 'For fifty years,' he said, 'I have served the princes who have succeeded one another in the government of this county, and I have never played the traitor. If any man affirm the contrary, I am ready to do battle with him, no matter who he may be, and to do all that behoveth a good and loyal knight, a nobleman, and a burgher of this town.' Note that Ghistelle here esteems his citizenship no less highly than his knighthood or his nobility. Such was the wont of the burgher-nobles of Bruges. In vain the lady of Ghistelle besought the guildsmen to spare her lord. In vain his children, the Provost of St. Donatian's, the Dean of Notre Dame and the foreign merchants, joined their supplication to hers. Jacob's head rolled on the scaffold.