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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?"
Grotius entirely approved of the answer when told to him. Meantime Madame Daatselaer had gone to her brother-in-law van der Veen, a clothier by trade, whom she found in his shop talking with an officer of the Loevestein garrison. She whispered in the clothier's ear, and he, making an excuse to the officer, followed her home at once. They found Grotius sitting where he had been left.
Madame Daatselaer therefore received and forwarded into Loevestein or into Holland many parcels and boxes, besides attending to the periodical transmission of the mighty chest of books. Professor Vossius was then publishing a new edition of the tragedies of Seneca, and at his request Grotius enriched that work, from his prison, with valuable notes.
He told him that there was a good deed to be done which he could do better than any man, that his conscience would never reproach him for it, and that he would at the same time earn no trifling reward. He begged the mason to procure a complete dress as for a journeyman, and to follow him to the house of his brother-in-law Daatselaer.
"Master! master!" cried Elsje, rapping on the chest. There was no answer. "My God! my God!" shrieked the poor maid-servant. "My poor master is dead." "Ah!" said Madame Daatselaer, "your mistress has made a bad business of it. Yesterday she had a living husband. Now she has a dead one." But soon there was a vigorous rap on the inside of the lid, and a cry from the prisoner: "Open the chest!
De Groot, as well as his wife, was aghast at the child's remark, and took it as a direct indication from Heaven. For while Madame Daatselaer had considered the recent observations of her visitor from Loevestein as idle jests, and perhaps wondered that Madame de Groot could be frivolous and apparently lighthearted on so dismal a topic, there had been really a hidden meaning in her words.
At a somewhat later period the celebrated Orientalist Erpenius sent him from time to time a large chest of books, the precious freight being occasionally renewed and the chest passing to and from Loevestein by way of Gorcum. At this town lived a sister of Erpenius, married to one Daatselaer, a considerable dealer in thread and ribbons, which he exported to England.
"Master! master!" cried Elsje, rapping on the chest. There was no answer. "My God! my God!" shrieked the poor maid-servant. "My poor master is dead." "Ah!" said Madame Daatselaer, "your mistress has made a bad business of it. Yesterday she had a living husband. Now she has a dead one." But soon there was a vigorous rap on the inside of the lid, and a cry from the prisoner: "Open the chest!
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.
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?"
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