The patience with which the venerable statesman submitted to the taunts, ignorant and insolent cross-questionings, and noisy interruptions of his judges, was not less remarkable than the tenacity of memory which enabled him thus day after day, alone, unaided by books, manuscripts, or friendly counsel, to reconstruct the record of forty years, and to expound the laws of the land by an array of authorities, instances, and illustrations in a manner that would be deemed masterly by one who had all the resources of libraries, documents, witnesses, and secretaries at command.

Only when insidious questions were put tending to impute to him corruption, venality, and treacherous correspondence with the enemy—­for they never once dared formally to accuse him of treason—­did that almost superhuman patience desert him.

He was questioned as to certain payments made by him to a certain van der Vecken in Spanish coin.  He replied briefly at first that his money transactions with that man of business extended over a period of twenty or thirty years, and amounted to many hundred thousands of florins, growing out of purchases and sales of lands, agricultural enterprises on his estates, moneys derived from his professional or official business and the like.  It was impossible for him to remember the details of every especial money payment that might have occurred between them.

Then suddenly breaking forth into a storm of indignation; he could mark from these questions, he said, that his enemies, not satisfied with having wounded his heart with their falsehoods, vile forgeries, and honour-robbing libels, were determined to break it.  This he prayed that God Almighty might avert and righteously judge between him and them.

It was plain that among other things they were alluding to the stale and senseless story of the sledge filled with baskets of coin sent by the Spanish envoys on their departure from the Hague, on conclusion of the Truce, to defray expenses incurred by them for board and lodging of servants, forage of horses, and the like-which had accidentally stopped at Barneveld’s door and was forthwith sent on to John Spronssen, superintendent of such affairs.  Passing over this wanton bit of calumny with disgust, he solemnly asserted that he had never at any period of his life received one penny nor the value of one penny from the King of Spain, the Archdukes, Spinola, or any other person connected with the enemy, saving only the presents publicly and mutually conferred according to invariable custom by the high contracting parties, upon the respective negotiators at conclusion of the Treaty of Truce.  Even these gifts Barneveld had moved his colleagues not to accept, but proposed that they should all be paid into the public treasury.  He had been overruled, he said, but that any dispassionate man of tolerable intelligence could imagine him, whose whole life had been a perpetual offence to Spain, to be in suspicious