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The maid-servant of the de Groots, a young girl of twenty, Elsje van Houwening by name, quick, intelligent, devoted, and courageous, was now taken into their confidence. The scheme was explained to her, and she was asked if she were willing to take the chest under her charge with her master in it, instead of the usual freight of books, and accompany it to Gorcum.
It was answered by the servant who usually waited on the prisoner, and who was now informed by the lady that it had been her intention to go herself to Gorcum, taking charge of the books which were valuable. As the weather was so tempestuous however, and as she was somewhat indisposed, it had been decided that Elsje should accompany the trunk.
She then revealed her project to him, and, after much entreaty, prevailed on him to get into the chest, and leave her in the prison. The books, which Grotius borrowed, were usually sent to Gorcum; and the chest, which contained them, passed in a boat, from the prison at Louvestein, to that town. Big with the fate of Grotius, the chest, as soon as he was enclosed in it, was moved into the boat.
It was answered by the servant who usually waited on the prisoner, and who was now informed by the lady that it had been her intention to go herself to Gorcum, taking charge of the books which were valuable. As the weather was so tempestuous however, and as she was somewhat indisposed, it had been decided that Elsje should accompany the trunk.
"Even those who were wont to rail at science and labour," said one who was present in the camp of Maurice, "declared that the siege would have been a far more arduous undertaking had it not been for those two engineers, Joost Matthes of Alost, and Jacob Kemp of Gorcum.
When it came to Gorcum, they wanted to put it on a sledge; but the maid telling the boatman there were some brittle things in it, and begging of him to take care how it was carried, it was put on a horse, and brought by two chairmen to David Dazelaer's, a friend of Grotius, and brother-in-law to Erpenius, having married his sister . When every body was gone, the maid opened the chest.
The wind, although violent, was favourable, and Gorcum in due time was reached. Elsje insisted upon having her own precious freight carried first into the town, although the skipper for some time was obstinately bent on leaving it to the very last, while all the other merchandise in the vessel should be previously unshipped.
At another visit one Saturday, 20th March, Madame de Groot asked her friend why all the bells of Gorcum march were ringing. "Because to-morrow begins our yearly fair," replied Dame Daatselaer. "Well, I suppose that all exiles and outlaws may come to Gorcum on this occasion," said Madame de Groot. "Such is the law, they say," answered her friend. "And my husband might come too?"
Therefore, if the envious wretch had not left Dort to follow his rival to the Hague in the first place, and then to Gorcum or to Loewestein, for the two places are separated only by the confluence of the Waal and the Meuse, Van Baerle's letter would have fallen into his hands and not the nurse's: in which event the poor prisoner, like the raven of the Roman cobbler, would have thrown away his time, his trouble, and, instead of having to relate the series of exciting events which are about to flow from beneath our pen like the varied hues of a many coloured tapestry, we should have naught to describe but a weary waste of days, dull and melancholy and gloomy as night's dark mantle.
With fresh memories of Alba's régime and the wholesale executions of the Council of Blood, under the direct influence of the terrible news from Antwerp, the Belgian Catholics were never more ready to wipe off old grievances, to forget the sacrileges of the Iconoclasts, the massacre of Gorcum and the persecution of those of their faith in the North.
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