subject of Henry himself. A certain native of Bordeaux, named Jean Leyre
(otherwise Rafis), who had been one of the most violent partisans of the
League, and who had been banished from France, had entered the Spanish
service, and long enjoyed a pension from the sovereign of that country,
in recompense of the zeal and ardour with which he rendered every evil
office in his power to the kingdom whence he had been cast out.

Circumstances, however, tended to make Leyre less useful to Philip, who
had, as we have shown, secured a much more efficient agent, and the
ill-acquired pension had accordingly been diminished, while the traitor
had no difficulty in perceiving that the favour which he had hitherto
experienced from his new master was lessened in the same proportion, a
conviction which determined him to make a vigorous effort to obtain the
permission of his offended sovereign to return to France. In order to
effect this object, Leyre attached himself to such of his countrymen as
were, like himself, domiciliated in Spain, and finally he made the
acquaintance of one Jean Blas, who in a moment of confidence revealed to
him that a secretary of the Comte de Rochepot[232] (the predecessor of
M. de Barrault as ambassador at the Court of Madrid), who had
subsequently returned to the service of the Duc de Villeroy, still
maintained a secret correspondence with the Spanish secretaries of
state, Don Juan Idiaque Franchesez, and Prada, to whom, in consideration
of a pension of twelve hundred crowns of gold, he betrayed all the most
important measures of the French cabinet.

This man, whose name was Nicholas L'Hote, was the son of an old and
trusted follower of the Duc de Villeroy, to whose family his own
ancestors had been attached for several generations, while he himself
was the godson of the Duke, who had obtained for him the honourable
office of secretary to M. de Rochepot, when that nobleman accepted the
embassy to Spain. On the return of the Count to France, L'Hote, whose
services were no longer necessary to him, was dismissed, and upon an
application to his old patron, was unhesitatingly received into his
bureau; where, believing that his loyalty and devotion to himself were
beyond all suspicion, he was employed by M. de Villeroy in deciphering
his despatches; an occupation which afforded the traitor ample means of
continuing his nefarious correspondence with his Spanish confederates.

Leyre had no sooner obtained this import