The Black Tulip | Page 2

the hidden map of the future.
The Grand Pensionary bowed before the will of his fellow citizens;
Cornelius de Witt, however, was more obstinate, and notwithstanding
all the threats of death from the Orangist rabble, who besieged him in
his house at Dort, he stoutly refused to sign the act by which the office
of Stadtholder was restored. Moved by the tears and entreaties of his
wife, he at last complied, only adding to his signature the two letters V.
C. (Vi Coactus), notifying thereby that he only yielded to force.
It was a real miracle that on that day he escaped from the doom
intended for him.
John de Witt derived no advantage from his ready compliance with the
wishes of his fellow citizens. Only a few days after, an attempt was
made to stab him, in which he was severely although not mortally
wounded.
This by no means suited the views of the Orange faction. The life of the
two brothers being a constant obstacle to their plans, they changed their
tactics, and tried to obtain by calumny what they had not been able to
effect by the aid of the poniard.
How rarely does it happen that, in the right moment, a great man is
found to head the execution of vast and noble designs; and for that
reason, when such a providential concurrence of circumstances does
occur, history is prompt to record the name of the chosen one, and to
hold him up to the admiration of posterity. But when Satan interposes
in human affairs to cast a shadow upon some happy existence, or to
overthrow a kingdom, it seldom happens that he does not find at his

side some miserable tool, in whose ear he has but to whisper a word to
set him at once about his task.
The wretched tool who was at hand to be the agent of this dastardly
plot was one Tyckelaer whom we have already mentioned, a surgeon
by profession.
He lodged an information against Cornelius de Witt, setting forth that
the warden -- who, as he had shown by the letters added to his signature,
was fuming at the repeal of the Perpetual Edict -- had, from hatred
against William of Orange, hired an assassin to deliver the new
Republic of its new Stadtholder; and he, Tyckelaer was the person thus
chosen; but that, horrified at the bare idea of the act which he was
asked to perpetrate, he had preferred rather to reveal the crime than to
commit it.
This disclosure was, indeed, well calculated to call forth a furious
outbreak among the Orange faction. The Attorney General caused, on
the 16th of August, 1672, Cornelius de Witt to be arrested; and the
noble brother of John de Witt had, like the vilest criminal, to undergo,
in one of the apartments of the town prison, the preparatory degrees of
torture, by means of which his judges expected to force from him the
confession of his alleged plot against William of Orange.
But Cornelius was not only possessed of a great mind, but also of a
great heart. He belonged to that race of martyrs who, indissolubly
wedded to their political convictions as their ancestors were to their
faith, are able to smile on pain: while being stretched on the rack, he
recited with a firm voice, and scanning the lines according to measure,
the first strophe of the "Justum ac tenacem" of Horace, and, making no
confession, tired not only the strength, but even the fanaticism, of his
executioners.
The judges, notwithstanding, acquitted Tyckelaer from every charge; at
the same time sentencing Cornelius to be deposed from all his offices
and dignities; to pay all the costs of the trial; and to be banished from
the soil of the Republic for ever.

This judgment against not only an innocent, but also a great man, was
indeed some gratification to the passions of the people, to whose
interests Cornelius de Witt had always devoted himself: but, as we shall
soon see, it was not enough.
The Athenians, who indeed have left behind them a pretty tolerable
reputation for ingratitude, have in this respect to yield precedence to the
Dutch. They, at least in the case of Aristides, contented themselves
with banishing him.
John de Witt, at the first intimation of the charge brought against his
brother, had resigned his office of Grand Pensionary. He too received a
noble recompense for his devotedness to the best interests of his
country, taking with him into the retirement of private life the hatred of
a host of enemies, and the fresh scars of wounds inflicted by assassins,
only too often the sole guerdon obtained by honest people, who are
guilty of having worked for their country, and of having forgotten their
own private