But, notwithstanding this order, the coachman suddenly came
to a stop.
“Now, then, what is the matter again?” asked John.
“Look there!” said the coachman.
John looked. The whole mass of the populace from the
Buytenhof appeared at the extremity of the street along
which the carriage was to proceed, and its stream moved
roaring and rapid, as if lashed on by a hurricane.
“Stop and get off,” said John to the coachman; “it is
useless to go any farther; we are lost!”
“Here they are! here they are!” five hundred voices were
crying at the same time.
“Yes, here they are, the traitors, the murderers, the
assassins!” answered the men who were running after the
carriage to the people who were coming to meet it. The
former carried in their arms the bruised body of one of
their companions, who, trying to seize the reins of the
horses, had been trodden down by them.
This was the object over which the two brothers had felt
their carriage pass.
The coachman stopped, but, however strongly his master urged
him, he refused to get off and save himself.
In an instant the carriage was hemmed in between those who
followed and those who met it. It rose above the mass of
moving heads like a floating island. But in another instant
it came to a dead stop. A blacksmith had with his hammer
struck down one of the horses, which fell in the traces.
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Dumas, Alexandre – The Black Tulip
At this moment, the shutter of a window opened, and
disclosed the sallow face and the dark eyes of the young
man, who with intense interest watched the scene which was
preparing. Behind him appeared the head of the officer,
almost as pale as himself.
“Good heavens, Monseigneur, what is going on there?”
whispered the officer.
“Something very terrible, to a certainty,” replied the
other.
“Don’t you see, Monseigneur, they are dragging the Grand
Pensionary from the carriage, they strike him, they tear him
to pieces!”
“Indeed, these people must certainly be prompted by a most
violent indignation,” said the young marl, with the same
impassible tone which he had preserved all along.
“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
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Dumas, Alexandre – The Black Tulip
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