midnight
About four o'clock a return of the noise was heard , but of no threatening character to Gryphus and his daughter . The people were only dragging in the two corpses , which they came back to gibbet at the usual place of execution . Rosa hid herself this time also , but only that she might not see the ghastly spectacle . At midnight , people again knocked at the gate of the jail , or rather at the barricade which served in its stead : it was Cornelius van Baerle whom they were bringing . When the jailer received this new inmate , and saw from the warrant the name and station of his prisoner , he muttered with his turnkey smile , -- `` Godson of Cornelius de Witt ! Well , young man , we have the family cell here , and we will give it to you . '' And quite enchanted with his joke , the ferocious Orangeman took his cresset and his keys to conduct Cornelius to the cell , which on that very morning Cornelius de Witt had left to go into exile , or what in revolutionary times is meant instead by those sublime philosophers who lay it down as an axiom of high policy , `` It is the dead only who do not return . ''