That night his mother, wife, and son paid him a long visit of farewell in his prison.  The Gevangen Poort of the Hague, an antique but mean building of brown brick and commonplace aspect, still stands in one of the most public parts of the city.  A gloomy archway, surmounted by windows grimly guarded by iron lattice-work, forms the general thoroughfare from the aristocratic Plaats and Kneuterdyk and Vyverberg to the inner court of the ancient palace.  The cells within are dark, noisome, and dimly lighted, and even to this day the very instruments of torture, used in the trials of these and other prisoners, may be seen by the curious.  Half a century later the brothers de Witt were dragged from this prison to be literally torn to pieces by an infuriated mob.

The misery of that midnight interview between the widow of Barneveld, her daughter-in-law, and the condemned son and husband need not be described.  As the morning approached, the gaoler warned the matrons to take their departure that the prisoner might sleep.

“What a woful widow you will be,” said Groeneveld to his wife, as she sank choking with tears upon the ground.  The words suddenly aroused in her the sense of respect for their name.

“At least for all this misery endured,” she said firmly, “do me enough honour to die like a gentleman.”  He promised it.  The mother then took leave of the son, and History drops a decorous veil henceforth over the grief-stricken form of Mary of Barneveld.

Next morning the life-guards of the Stadholder and other troops were drawn up in battle-array in the outer and inner courtyard of the supreme tribunal and palace.  At ten o’clock Groeneveld came forth from the prison.  The Stadholder had granted as a boon to the family that he might be neither fettered nor guarded as he walked to the tribunal.  The prisoner did not forget his parting promise to his wife.  He appeared full-dressed in velvet cloak and plumed hat, with rapier by his side, walking calmly through the inner courtyard to the great hall.  Observing the windows of the Stadholder’s apartments crowded with spectators, among whom he seemed to recognize the Prince’s face, he took off his hat and made a graceful and dignified salute.  He greeted with courtesy many acquaintances among the crowd through which he passed.  He entered the hall and listened in silence to the sentence condemning him to be immediately executed with the sword.  Van Dyk and Korenwinder shared the same doom, but were provisionally taken back to prison.

Groeneveld then walked calmly and gracefully as before from the hall to the scaffold, attended by his own valet, and preceded by the provost-marshal and assistants.  He was to suffer, not where his father had been beheaded, but on the “Green Sod.”  This public place of execution for ordinary criminals was singularly enough in the most elegant and frequented quarter of the Hague.  A few rods from the Gevangen Poort, at the western end of the Vyverberg, on the edge of the cheerful triangle called the Plaats, and looking directly down the broad and stately Kneuterdyk, at the end of which stood Aremberg House, lately the residence of the great Advocate, was the mean and sordid scaffold.