thoughts of mercy. He was successful, was called to the house of nobles,
and regained the embassy of Paris, while the house of Barneveld was
trodden into the dust of dishonour and ruin. Rarely has an offended
politician's revenge been more thorough than his. Never did the mocking
fiend betray his victims into the hands of the avenger more sardonically
than was done in this sombre tragedy.

The trials of the prisoners were rapidly conducted. Van Dyk, cruelly
tortured, confessed on the rack all the details of the conspiracy as they
were afterwards embodied in the sentences and have been stated in the
preceding narrative. Groeneveld was not tortured. His answers to the
interrogatories were so vague as to excite amazement at his general
ignorance of the foul transaction or at the feebleness of his memory,
while there was no attempt on his part to exculpate himself from the
damning charge. That it was he who had furnished funds for the proposed
murder and mutiny, knowing the purpose to which they were to be applied,
was proved beyond all cavil and fully avowed by him.

On the 28th May, he, Korenwinder, and van Dyk were notified that they
were to appear next day in the courthouse to hear their sentence, which
would immediately afterwards be executed.

That night his mother, wife, and son paid him a long visit of farewell
in his prison. The Gevangen Poort of the Hague, an antique but mean
building of brown brick and commonplace aspect, still stands in one of
the most public parts of the city. A gloomy archway, surmounted by
windows grimly guarded by iron lattice-work, forms the general
thoroughfare from the aristocratic Plaats and Kneuterdyk and Vyverberg
to the inner court of the ancient palace. The cells within are dark,
noisome, and dimly lighted, and even to this day the very instruments of