rtations and denunciations of the English ambassadors. It was for
this that he kept steadily in view the necessity of dealing with and
supporting corporate France, the French government, when there were many
reasons for feeling sympathy with the internal rebellion against that
government. Maurice felt differently. He was connected by blood or
alliance with more than one of the princes now perpetually in revolt.
Bouillon was his brother-in-law, the sister of Conde was his brother's
wife. Another cousin, the Elector-Palatine, was already encouraging
distant and extravagant hopes of the Imperial crown. It was not unnatural
that he should feel promptings of ambition and sympathy difficult to avow
even to himself, and that he should feel resentment against the man by
whom this secret policy was traversed in the well-considered interest of
the Republican government.

Aerssens, who, with the keen instinct of self-advancement was already
attaching himself to Maurice as to the wheels of the chariot going
steadily up the hill, was not indisposed to loosen his hold upon the man
through whose friendship he had first risen, and whose power was now
perhaps on the decline. Moreover, events had now caused him to hate the
French government with much fervour. With Henry IV. he had been
all-powerful. His position had been altogether exceptional, and he had
wielded an influence at Paris more than that exerted by any foreign
ambassador. The change naturally did not please him, although he well
knew the reasons. It was impossible for the Dutch ambassador to be
popular at a court where Spain ruled supreme. Had he been willing to eat
humiliation as with a spoon, it would not have sufficed. They knew him,
they feared him, and they could not doubt that his sympathies would ever
be with the malcontent princes. At the same time he did not like to lose
his hold upon the place, nor to have it known, as yet, to the world that
his power was diminished.

"The Queen commands me to tell you," said the French ambassador de Russy
to the States-General, "that the language of the Sieur Aerssens has not
only astonished her, but scandalized her to that degree that she could
not refrain from demanding if it came from My Lords the States or from
himself. He having, however, affirmed to her Majesty that he had express
charge to justify it by reasons so remote from the hope and the belief
that she had conceived of your gratitude to the Most Christian King and
her