s "cumbersome and
perilous," was wholesome conduct enough towards the Netherlanders--and
still more so, had it been accompanied with frank offers of
assistance--but it was certainly somewhat to "hinder the courses of the
French."

But in truth all parties were engaged for a season in a round game of
deception, in which nobody was deceived.

Walsingham was impatient, almost indignant at this puerility. "Your
doings, no doubt of it," he wrote to Davison, "are observed by the French
faction, and therefore you cannot proceed so closely but it will be
espied. Howsoever it be, seeing direction groweth from hence, we cannot
but blame ourselves, if the effects thereof do not fall out to our
liking."

That sagacious statesman was too well informed, and too much accustomed
to penetrate the designs of his antagonists, to expect anything from the
present intrigues.

To loiter thus, when mortal blows should be struck, was to give the
Spanish government exactly that of which it was always most
gluttonous--time; and the Netherlanders had none of it to spare. "With
time and myself, there are two of us," was Philip II.'s favourite
observation; and the Prince of Parma was at this moment sorely perplexed
by the parsimony and the hesitations of his own government, by which his
large, swift and most creative genius was so often hampered.

Thus the Spanish soldiers, deep in the trenches, went with bare legs and
empty stomachs in January; and the Dutchmen, among their broken dykes,
were up to their ears in mud and water; and German mercenaries, in the
obedient Provinces, were burning the peasants' houses in order to sell
the iron to buy food withal; while grave-visaged statesmen, in
comfortable cabinets, wagged their long white beards at each other from a
distance, and exchanged grimaces and protocols which nobody heeded.

Walsingham was weary of this solemn trifling. "I conclude," said he to
Davison, "that her Majesty--with reverence be it spoken--is ill advised,
to direct you in a course that is like to work so great peril. I know you
will do your best endeavour to keep all things upright, and yet it is
hard--the disease being now come to this state, or, as the physicians
term it, crisis--to carry yourself in such sort, but that it will, I
fear, breed a dangerous alteration in the cause."

He denounced with impatience, almost with indignation, the insincerity
and injustice of these intolerable hesitations. "Sorry am I," said he,
"t