ing," said du Maurier, "is to
beat the air. And then Aerssens bewitches them, and they imagine that
after having played runaway horses his Majesty will be only too happy to
receive them back, caress them, and, in order to have their friendship,
approve everything they have been doing right or wrong."

Aerssens had it all his own way, and the States-General had just paid him
12,000 francs in cash on the ground that Langerac's salary was larger
than his had been when at the head of the same embassy many years before.

His elevation into the body of nobles, which Maurice had just stocked
with five other of his partisans, was accounted an additional affront to
France, while on the other hand the Queen-Mother, having through
Epernon's assistance made her escape from Blois, where she had been kept
in durance since the death of Concini, now enumerated among other
grievances for which she was willing to take up arms against her son that
the King's government had favoured Barneveld.

It was strange that all the devotees of Spain--Mary de' Medici, and
Epernon, as well as James I. and his courtiers--should be thus embittered
against the man who had sold the Netherlands to Spain.

At last the Prince told the French ambassadors that the "people of the
Provinces considered their persistent intercessions an invasion of their
sovereignty." Few would have anything to say to them. "No one listens to
us, no one replies to us," said du Maurier, "everyone visiting us is
observed, and it is conceived a reproach here to speak to the ambassadors
of France."

Certainly the days were changed since Henry IV. leaned on the arm of
Barneveld, and consulted with him, and with him only, among all the
statesmen of Europe on his great schemes for regenerating Christendom and
averting that general war which, now that the great king had been
murdered and the Advocate imprisoned, had already begun to ravage Europe.

Van der Myle had gone to Paris to make such exertions as he could among
the leading members of the council in favour of his father-in-law.
Langerac, the States' ambassador there, who but yesterday had been
turning at every moment to the Advocate for light and warmth as to the
sun, now hastened to disavow all respect or regard for him. He scoffed at
the slender sympathy van der Myle was finding in the bleak political
atmosphere. He had done his best to find out what he had been negotiating
with the members of the council and was glad to say