aled, did their best to
bring about a better understanding, but with hardly more than an apparent
success.

Once more there were stories flying about that the stadholder had called
the Advocate liar, and that he had struck him or offered to strike
him--tales as void of truth, doubtless, as those so rife after the battle
of Nieuport, but which indicated the exasperation which existed.

When the news of the rejection of the King's ratification reached Madrid,
the indignation of the royal conscience-keepers was vehement.

That the potentate of so large a portion of the universe should be
treated by those lately his subjects with less respect than that due from
equals to equals, seemed intolerable. So thoroughly inspired, however,
was the king by the love of religion and the public good--as he informed
Marquis Spinola by letter--and so intense was his desire for the
termination of that disastrous war, that he did not hesitate indulgently
to grant what had been so obstinately demanded. Little was to be
expected, he said, from the stubbornness of the provinces, and from their
extraordinary manner of transacting business, but looking, nevertheless,
only to divine duty, and preferring its dictates to a selfish regard for
his own interests, he had resolved to concede that liberty to the
provinces which had been so importunately claimed. He however imposed the
condition that the States should permit free and public exercise of the
Catholic religion throughout their territories, and that so long as such
worship was unobstructed, so long and no longer should the liberty now
conceded to the provinces endure.

"Thus did this excellent prince," says an eloquent Jesuit, "prefer
obedience to the Church before subjection to himself, and insist that
those, whom he emancipated from his own dominions, should still be loyal
to the sovereignty of the Pope."

Friar John, who had brought the last intelligence from the Netherlands,
might have found it difficult, if consulted, to inform the king how many
bills of exchange would be necessary to force this wonderful condition on
the Government of the provinces. That the republic should accept that
liberty as a boon which she had won with the red right hand, and should
establish within her domains as many agents for Spanish reaction as there
were Roman priests, monks, and Jesuits to be found, was not very
probable. It was not thus nor then that the great lesson of religious
equality and liberty