The faithful fiddler then, for a thousand florins, chartered a trading
vessel commanded by one Jacob Beltje to take a cargo of Dutch cheese to
Wesel on the Rhine. By this means, after a few adventures, they effected
their escape, and, arriving not long afterwards at Brussels, were
formally taken under the protection of the Archduchess Isabella.

Stoutenburg afterwards travelled in France and Italy, and returned to
Brussels. His wife, loathing his crime and spurning all further
communication with him, abandoned him to his fate. The daughter of
Marnix of Sainte-Aldegonde had endured poverty, obscurity, and unmerited
obloquy, which had become the lot of the great statesman's family after
his tragic end, but she came of a race that would not brook dishonour.
The conspirator and suborner of murder and treason, the hirer and
companion of assassins, was no mate for her.

Stoutenburg hesitated for years as to his future career, strangely
enough keeping up a hope of being allowed to return to his country.

Subsequently he embraced the cause of his country's enemies, converted
himself to the Roman Church, and obtained a captaincy of horse in the
Spanish service. He was seen one day, to the disgust of many spectators,
to enter Antwerp in black foreign uniform, at the head of his troopers,
waving a standard with a death's-head embroidered upon it, and wearing,
like his soldiers, a sable scarf and plume. History disdains to follow
further the career of the renegade, traitor, end assassin.

When the Seigneur de Groeneveld learned from his younger brother, on the
eventful 6th of February, that the plot had been discovered, he gave
himself up for lost. Remorse and despair, fastening upon his naturally
feeble character, seemed to render him powerless. His wife, of more