Three times he felt, with a shudder, the cold stream of air from the knife coming near his neck, but, what a surprise! he felt neither pain nor shock.
He saw no change in the colour of the sky, and of the world around him.
Then suddenly, Van Baerle felt gentle hands raising him, and soon stood on his feet again, although trembling a little.
He looked around him. There was some one by his side, reading a large parchment, scaled with a huge seal of red wax.
And the same sun, yellow and pale, as it behoves a Dutch sun to be, was shining in the skies; and the same grated window looked down upon him, from the Buitenhof.
And the same rabble, no longer yelling, but completely thunderstruck, was staring at him from the streets below.
Van Baerle began to be sensible to what was going on around him.
His Highness, William, Prince of Orange, very likely afraid that Van Baerle’s blood would turn the scale of judgment against him, had compassionately taken into consideration his good character, and the apparent proofs of his innocence.
His Highness, accordingly, had granted him his life. Cornelius at first hoped that the pardon would be complete, and that he would be restored to his full liberty and to his flower-borders at Dort.
But Cornelius was mistaken. To use an expression of Madame de Sevigné, who wrote about the same time, “there was a postscript to the letter;” and the most important point of the letter was contained in the postscript.
In this postscript, William of Orange, Stadtholder of
