him that he neither admitted the premises nor the
conclusion of the Advocate's letter, saying that many things set down in
it were false. He furthermore told him a story of a certain old man who,
having in his youth invented many things and told them often for truth,
believed them when he came to old age to be actually true and was ever
ready to stake his salvation upon them. Whereupon he shut the window and
left van der Myle to make such application of the parable as he thought
proper, vouchsafing no further answer to Barneveld's communication.

Dudley Carleton related the anecdote to his government with much glee,
but it may be doubted whether this bold way of giving the lie to a
venerable statesman through his son-in-law would have been accounted as
triumphant argumentation anywhere out of a barrack.

As for the Remonstrance to the States of Holland, although most
respectfully received in that assembly except by the five opposition
cities, its immediate effect on the public was to bring down a fresh
"snow storm"--to use the expression of a contemporary--of pamphlets,
libels, caricatures, and broadsheets upon the head of the Advocate. In
every bookseller's and print shop window in all the cities of the
country, the fallen statesman was represented in all possible ludicrous,
contemptible, and hateful shapes, while hags and blind beggars about the
streets screeched filthy and cursing ballads against him, even at his
very doors.

The effect of energetic, uncompromising calumny has rarely been more
strikingly illustrated than in the case of this statesman. Blackened
daily all over by a thousand trowels, the purest and noblest character
must have been defiled, and it is no wonder that the incrustation upon
the Advocate's fame should have lasted for two centuries and a half. It
may perhaps endure for as many more: Not even the vile Marshal d'Ancre,
who had so recently perished, was more the mark of obloquy in a country
which he had dishonoured, flouted, and picked to the bone than was
Barneveld in a commonwealth which he had almost created and had served
faithfully from youth to old age. It was even the fashion to compare him
with Concini in order to heighten the wrath of the public, as if any
parallel between the ignoble, foreign paramour of a stupid and sensual
queen, and the great statesman, patriot, and jurist of whom civilization
will be always proud, could ever enter any but an idiot's brain.

Meantime the Stadhold