The Princess reported the result of this interview to Count William, at
which both were so distressed that they determined to leave the Hague.

There is something almost superhuman in the sternness of this
stoicism. Yet it lay in the proud and highly tempered character of
the Netherlanders. There can be no doubt that the Advocate would have
expressly dictated this proceeding if he had been consulted. It was
precisely the course adopted by himself. Death rather than life with a
false acknowledgment of guilt and therefore with disgrace. The loss of
his honour would have been an infinitely greater triumph to his enemies
than the loss of his head.

There was no delay in drawing up the sentence. Previously to this
interview with the widow of William the Silent, the family of the
Advocate had presented to the judges three separate documents, rather in
the way of arguments than petitions, undertaking to prove by elaborate
reasoning and citations of precedents and texts of the civil law that the
proceedings against him were wholly illegal, and that he was innocent of
every crime.

No notice had been taken of those appeals.

Upon the questions and answers as already set forth the sentence soon
followed, and it may be as well that the reader should be aware, at this
point in the narrative, of the substance of that sentence so soon to be
pronounced. There had been no indictment, no specification of crime.
There had been no testimony or evidence. There had been no argument for
the prosecution or the defence. There had been no trial whatever. The
prisoner was convicted on a set of questions to which he had put in
satisfactory replies. He was sentenced on a preamble. The sentence was