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The town of Gorcum was exactly opposite on the northern side of the Waal, while Worcum was about a league's distance from the castle on the southern side, but separated from it by the Meuse. The prisoners, after crossing the drawbridge, were led through thirteen separate doors, each one secured by iron bolts and heavy locks, until they reached their separate apartments.
The chest however was put into the boat, and Grotius' maid, who was in the secret, had orders to go with it to Gorcum, and put it into a house there.
She answered he might search for him: but being much pressed and even threatened, she confessed that she had caused him to be carried to Gorcum in the book chest: and that she had done no more than kept her word to him, to take the first opportunity of setting her husband at liberty.
Fortunately, my father saved me from the difficulty by chiming in, "'What did he say? Didn't he fume and fret? "I interrupted him, saying, 'Was it not natural that he should be furious, you were so unjust and brutal, father? "'Well, now, are you mad? cried my father; 'what immense misfortune is it to crush a tulip bulb? You may buy a hundred of them in the market of Gorcum.
Grotius soon afterwards addressed a letter to the States-General denouncing the statement of Muis as a fable, and these persistent attempts to injure him as cowardly and wicked. A few months later Madame de Groot happened to be in the house of Daatselaer on one of her periodical visits to Gorcum.
She was nevertheless to be subjected to the perpetual inquisition of the market-basket, which she was not ashamed with her maid to take to and from Gorcum, and to petty wrangles about the kitchen fire where she was proud to superintend the cooking of the scanty fare for her husband and her five children. There was a reason for the spite of the military jailer.
"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.
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.
One of the crew asked her why she did so, and she replied that the servant in the castle had been tormenting her, saying that she would never dare to sail to Gorcum in such tempestuous weather, and she was now signalling him that she had been as good as her word. Whereupon she continued to wave the handkerchief.
"This is a rare enterprise that Captain Heraugiere has proposed to the prince," he said, "and promises well for success. It is to be kept a profound secret, and a few only will know aught of it until it is executed. Heraugiere is of course to have command of the party which is to be hidden in the barge, and is to pick out eighty men from the garrisons of Gorcum and Lowesteyn.
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