preparing to serve Cornelius Grotius in the same manner, but he was awake:  he happened to be employed in composing a Latin epigram.  On hearing the shot, he took a pistol which lay on a chair by his bed side, and seeing the murderer advance softly to him (it was moon-light) he fired, and laid him flat on the floor:  the people of the inn got up on the noise, and delivered the villain, who was dangerously wounded, into the hands of justice, and he was broke on the wheel.

Hugo Grotius had also three daughters, Frances, Mary, and Cornelia; Frances, the youngest, was born in October, 1626, before her time, her mother being delivered of her in the eighth month:  accordingly this young person was short-lived, for she died in the beginning of the year 1628.  Mary, his second daughter, died at Paris in the month of March, 1635, of the fatigue and cold she received in her journey to that city.  Grotius informed his father of her death by a letter[772] dated March 23, 1635, in which he tells him she died almost without pain, and with a deep sense of religion.  “My wife and I, says he, bear this misfortune like people accustomed to adversity:  besides, why should we call her death a misfortune? has not God a right to take back what he gave? and ought not we to flatter ourselves that she is arrived at that happy state, which the young ought to long after as much as the old?  We are delivered from the care of procuring a husband for her:  perhaps we should have had much difficulty to find one that would have been agreeable to her and to all her family:  and even if we should have found one that pleased us all at first, would there not have been room to apprehend that he had concealed his true character for a time, and that he would afterwards make her unhappy?  She is now delivered from the pains of bearing children, and bringing them up.  More happy than her mother, she will not see judges incensed against her husband, because he is innocent:  she will not be obliged to shut herself up in prison for her husband; nor to lead a wandering life to accompany him.  Let us congratulate her that God has taken her out of the world before she knew too much of the evil or what are called the good things of it.  Let us congratulate ourselves on her having lived with us as long as life was agreeable to her, and free from any mixture of bitterness.  What is there at present in Christendom to make us desire life?  Divisions in the Church, bloody wars, men slaughtered, women violated, cruel murders, and multitudes reduced to beggary; Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia pillaged; the heirs of the most noble families reduced to the necessity of living on alms, if it can be called living to drag out their days in misery, wishing for death, which alone can put an end to it.”

Cornelia, the eldest of Grotius’s daughters, who survived her father, married John Barthon, Viscount of Mombas, a Gentleman of Poitou, who was obliged to quit France for having displeased Lewis XIV.  He went to Holland, from whence he was also forced to fly, having been involved in the misfortunes wherein the De Wits perished, and which gave Peter Grotius, his brother-in-law, so much uneasiness.