meaning on
the words which Grandval declared that he had heard from the lips of
the banished King of England? And who that knew the Court of Versailles
would believe that Barbesieux, a youth, a mere novice in politics, and
rather a clerk than a minister, would have dared to do what he had done
without taking his master's pleasure? Very charitable and very ignorant
persons might perhaps indulge a hope that Lewis had not been an
accessory before the fact. But that he was an accessory after the fact
no human being could doubt. He must have seen the proceedings of the
Court Martial, the evidence, the confession. If he really abhorred
assassination as honest men abhor it, would not Barbesieux have been
driven with ignominy from the royal presence, and flung into the
Bastile? Yet Barbesieux was still at the War Office; and it was not
pretended that he had been punished even by a word or a frown. It was
plain, then, that both Kings were partakers in the guilt of Grandval.
And if it were asked how two princes who made a high profession of
religion could have fallen into such wickedness, the answer was that
they had learned their religion from the Jesuits. In reply to these
reproaches the English Jacobites said very little; and the French
government said nothing at all. [315]

The campaign in the Netherlands ended without any other event deserving
to be recorded. On the eighteenth of October William arrived in England.
Late in the evening of the twentieth he reached Kensington, having
traversed the whole length of the capital. His reception was cordial.
The crowd was great; the acclamations were loud; and all the windows
along his route, from Aldgate to Piccadilly, were lighted up. [316]

But, notwithstanding these favourable symptoms, the nation was
disappointed and discontented. The war had been unsuccessful by land.
By sea a great advantage had been gained, but had not been improved. The
general expectation had been that the victory of May would be followed
by a descent on the coast of France, that Saint Maloes would he
bombarded, that the last remains of Tourville's squadron would be
destroyed, and that the arsenals of Brest and Rochefort would be laid in
ruins. This expectation was, no doubt, unreasonable. It did not follow,
because Rooke and his seamen had silenced the batteries hastily thrown
up by Bellefonds, that it would be safe to expose ships to the fire of
regular fortresses. The government, however, was not less