Читать книгу Wonderful Escapes - Frederic Tscharner Bernard - Страница 21

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Grotius was involved in the ruin of Barneveldt, for whom he had a very great admiration, and whose partisan he had been; and was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, and the confiscation of all his property. He was confined in the castle of Louvenstein, near Gorcum. This was in 1619, when he was in his thirty-sixth year. He was very closely guarded, and the only consolation he enjoyed was that of the company of his wife, Marie de Reygesberg, who had obtained permission to visit him. The boon was accompanied by this cruel condition, that if she left the prison she would not be allowed to return to it. After a time, however, the severity of this rule was slightly relaxed, and she was allowed to leave the place twice a week.

Grotius had been some eighteen months at Louvenstein, when Muys van Holi, one of his declared enemies, who had also been one of his judges, warned the States-General that he had received certain information of the prisoner’s intention to escape. An agent was at once sent to the castle, to examine into the truth of the report, but he returned without having been able to find anything in confirmation of it. It was, however, so far true, that Marie de Reygesberg was constantly occupied with a design for effecting her husband’s liberation.

The prisoner had been allowed to borrow books of his friends, and when he had read them they were sent away in a large trunk, together with his linen, which was washed at Gorcum. During the first year the guards had never once failed to make a close search of this trunk whenever it was sent out of the prison; but tired at length of turning over nothing but dirty linen and books, they used to allow it to pass without examination. Their negligence did not escape the notice of the prisoner’s wife, and it occurred to her that she might take advantage of it. She discussed her plans with her husband, and persuaded him to let himself be shut up in the trunk, first taking care to bore several small holes in it at either end for the admission of air. When all was ready, the intended escape was rehearsed. The prisoner was shut up in the trunk during the time usually occupied by the journey to Gorcum, and this experiment was repeated several times, until he had grown tolerably accustomed to all the inconveniences of the situation. The adventurous pair then awaited nothing but a favourable moment for carrying out their design.

This soon came: the commandant of the fortress left the place for a short time on business; and before his departure the brave wife sought an interview with him, and obtained his permission to send away the trunk full of books, alleging as a reason that her husband being very weak, she wished to place the temptation to study beyond his reach. On leaving the commandant she immediately returned to the apartment occupied by Grotius, and shut him up in the trunk. His valet and a female servant were in the secret, and she caused them to spread the report of her husband’s illness among the soldiers, so that his temporary absence from his accustomed place of resort within the castle might occasion no surprise. Two soldiers were then brought in to carry the trunk, and one of them finding it very heavy, observed: “There must be an Arminian inside,” in allusion to the sect, flourishing at this epoch, to which Grotius belonged. The wife replied calmly, “In truth there are some Arminian books.” The chest was then lowered to the ground by means of a ladder, though not without great difficulty. The soldier who had found it too heavy was by no means satisfied with the explanation he had received; and he insisted that the trunk should be opened, in order that he might see what it really contained. He even went so far as to communicate his suspicions to the wife of the commandant, but the lady, either through negligence, or with the deliberate intention of refusing to notice what she had no desire to see, declined to listen to him. She replied, that the trunk contained nothing but books, as the wife of Grotius had assured her, and that it might be taken to the boat. This was done, and the female servant was allowed to take charge of it and to convey it to a certain house in Gorcum, as she had been ordered to do. She steadily refused, on its arrival at the landing-place, to have it placed on a sledge along with the rest of the luggage, on the ground that it was full of very fragile articles, which might easily be damaged. It was accordingly lifted into a hand barrow, and wheeled to the house of David Dazelaër, a friend of Grotius, and a relation of Marie de Reygesberg. When the woman found herself alone with her charge, she lifted the lid of the chest, and her master leaped out safe and sound, though he had suffered somewhat from his long confinement in a space three feet and a half in length. He at once assumed the dress of a mason; and taking a rule and trowel in his hand, he left the house by a back door