After seven months wrangling and bitterness, at a cost of a million
guelders, the Synod came to no conclusion more Christian than that
no punishment was too bad for the holder of such opinions, which
were dangerous to the State and subversive of true religion. The
result was that Holland's Calvinism was intensified; Barneveldt
(who had been in prison all the time) was, as we shall see, beheaded;
Grotius and Hoogenbeets were sentenced to imprisonment for life; and
Episcopius, the Remonstrant leader at the Synod, was, together with
many others, banished. Episcopius heard his sentence with composure,
merely remarking, "God will require of you an account of your conduct
at the great day of His judgment. There you and the whole Synod will
appear. May you never meet with a judge such as the Synod has been
to us."

Davies has a story of Episcopius which is too good to be omitted. On
banishment he was given his expenses by the States. Among the
dollars given to Episcopius was one, coined apparently in the Duchy of
Brunswick, bearing on the one side the figure of Truth, with the motto,
"Truth overcomes all things"; and on the reverse, "In well-doing fear
no one". Episcopius was so struck with the coincidence that he had
the coin set in gold and carefully preserved.

It is impossible for any one who has read _La Tulipe Noire_ not to
think of that story when wandering about Dort; but it is a mistake to
read it in the town itself, for the Great Alexandre's fidelity to fact
will not bear the strain. Dumas never wore his historical, botanical,
geographical and ethnographical knowledge more like a flower than
in this brave but breathless story. In Boxtel's envy we may perhaps
believe; in Gryphon's savagery; and in the craft and duplicity of the
Stadtholder; but if ever a French philosopher and a French grisette