e precipitation to spend the whole year 1607 in forming a single
phrase; to wit, that the archdukes and the king would treat with the
United Provinces as with countries to which they made no pretensions; and
to spend the best part of another year in futile efforts to recal that
phrase; if all this had been recklessness and haste, then, surely, the
most sluggish canal in Holland was a raging cataract, and the march of a
glacier electric speed.

Midsummer had arrived. The period in which peace was to be made or
abandoned altogether had passed. Jeannin had returned from his visit to
Paris; the Danish envoys, sent to watch the negotiations, had left the
Hague, utterly disgusted with a puppet-show, all the strings of which,
they protested, were pulled from the Louvre. Brother John, exasperated by
the superhuman delays, fell sick of a fever at Burgos, and was sent, on
his recovery, to the court at Valladolid to be made ill again by the same
cause, and still there came no sound from the Government of Spain.

At last the silence was broken. Something that was called the voice of
the king reached the ears of the archduke. Long had he wrestled in prayer
on this great subject, said Philip III., fervently had he besought the
Omnipotent for light. He had now persuaded himself that he should not
fulfil his duty to God, nor satisfy his own strong desire for maintaining
the Catholic faith, nor preserve his self-respect, if he now conceded his
supreme right to the Confederated Provinces at any other price than the
uncontrolled exercise, within their borders, of the Catholic religion. He
wished, therefore, as obedient son of the Church and Defender of the
Faith, to fulfil this primary duty, untrammelled by any human
consideration, by any profit that might induce him towards a contrary
course. That which he had on other occasions more than once signified he
now confirmed. His mind was fixed; this was his last and immutable
determination, that if the confederates should permit the free and public
exercise of the Catholic, Roman, Apostolic religion to all such as wished
to live and die in it, for this cause so grateful to God, and for no
other reason, he also would permit to them that supreme right over the
provinces, and that authority which now belonged to himself. Natives and
residents of those countries should enjoy liberty, just so long as the
exercise of the Catholic religion flourished there, and not one day nor
hour longer.

Phili