"Holloa!" he exclaimed, with that bantering tone which is peculiar to men of his profession; "be easy, gentlemen, my soldiers will not fire a shot; but, on the other hand, you will not advance by one step towards the prison."
"And do you know, sir, that we have muskets?" roared the commandant of the burghers.
"I must know it, by Jove, you have made them glitter enough before my eyes; but I beg you to observe also that we on our side have pistols, that the pistol carries admirably to a distance of fifty yards, and that you are only twenty-five from us."
"Death to the traitors!" cried the exasperated burghers.
"Go along with you," growled the officer, "you always cry the same thing over again. It is very tiresome."
With this, he took his post at the head of his troops, whilst the tumult grew fiercer and fiercer about the Buytenhof.
And yet the fuming crowd did not know that, at that very moment when they were tracking the scent of one of their victims, the other, as if hurrying to meet his fate, passed, at a distance of not more than a hundred yards, behind the groups of people and the dragoons, to betake himself to the Buytenhof.
John de Witt, indeed, had alighted from his coach with his servant, and quietly walked across the courtyard of the prison.
Mentioning his name to the turnkey, who however knew him, he said,-"Good morning, Gryphus; I am coming to take away my brother, who, as you know, is condemned to exile, and to carry him out of the town."
Whereupon the jailer, a sort of bear, trained to lock and unlock the gates of the prison, had greeted him and admitted him into the building, the doors of which were immediately closed again.
Ten yards farther on, John de Witt met a lovely young girl, of about seventeen or eighteen, dressed in the national costume of the Frisian women, who, with pretty demureness, dropped a curtesy to him. Chucking her under the chin, he said to her,-"Good morning, my good and fair Rosa; how is my brother?"
"Oh, Mynheer John!" the young girl replied, "I am not afraid of the harm which has been done to him. That's all over now."
"But what is it you are afraid of?"
"I am afraid of the harm which they are going to do to him."
"Oh, yes," said De Witt, "you mean to speak of the people down below, don't you?"