"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."

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.