She found many friends[166]; but as she was convinced of her husband's innocence, and knew that in all Holland there was not a man capable of labouring so effectually for the interest of his Country, she imagined they ought to make the first advances, ask him to forget what was past, and pray him to return.

This was to suppose the return of the Golden age; and experience ought to have informed her better.

She would not therefore have recourse to petitions and entreaties to obtain Grotius' return, lest they should be taken for some acknowledgment of a fault.
This encreased the malevolence of his enemies, and they fought to revenge themselves on his brother-in-law Reigersberg, to whom they wanted to make a crime of his corresponding with Grotius by letters; but their malice was ineffectual, because the calumnies to which they had recourse were too easily confuted.

However his friends bestirred themselves in his favour: of which Grotius being informed, he begged of them to promise nothing in his name, that there might be no ground to imagine he solicited leave to return.

"For (he writes to his brother) that is what my enemies want, that they may reproach me with asking pardon for my pretended faults." The endeavours of his friends were fruitless; and his brother wrote to him (February 21, 1630) that there was no hope of success.
If they did not obtain his return they at least made him gain a cause of consequence.