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."
But the young man had already opened his eyes again.
"To be sure," he said. "These people are really implacable. It does no one good to offend them."
"Monseigneur," said the officer, "may not one save this poor man, who has been your Highness's instructor? If there be any means, name it, and if I should perish in the attempt----"
William of Orange--for he it was--knit his brows in a very forbidding manner, restrained the glance of gloomy malice which glistened in his half-closed eye, and answered,-"Captain Van Deken, I request you to go and look after my troops, that they may be armed for any emergency."
"But am I to leave your Highness here, alone, in the presence of all these murderers?"
"Go, and don't you trouble yourself about me more than I do myself," the Prince gruffly replied.
The officer started off with a speed which was much less owing to his sense of military obedience than to his pleasure at being relieved from the necessity of witnessing the shocking spectacle of the murder of the other brother.
He had scarcely left the room, when John--who, with an almost superhuman effort, had reached the stone steps of a house nearly opposite that where his former pupil concealed himself--began to stagger under the blows which were inflicted on him from all sides, calling out,-"My brother! where is my brother?"
One of the ruffians knocked off his hat with a blow of his clenched fist.
Another showed to him his bloody hands; for this fellow had ripped open Cornelius and disembowelled him, and was now hastening to the spot in order not to lose the opportunity of serving the Grand Pensionary in the same manner, whilst they were dragging the dead body of Cornelius to the gibbet.
John uttered a cry of agony and grief, and put one of his hands before his eyes.
"Oh, you close your eyes, do you?" said one of the soldiers of the burgher guard; "well, I shall open them for you."
And saying this he stabbed him with his pike in the face, and the blood spurted forth.
"My brother!" cried John de Witt, trying to see through the stream of blood which blinded him, what had become of Cornelius; "my brother, my brother!"
"Go and run after him!" bellowed another murderer, putting his musket to his temples and pulling the trigger.
But the gun did not go off.