out to depart
malcontent, his mission having totally failed. He chanced, when going to
his audience of leave-taking, after the arrival of his successor, Don
Inigo de Cardenas, to meet the Venetian ambassador, Antonio Foscarini. An
altercation took place between them, during which the Spaniard poured out
his wrath so vehemently, calling his colleague with neat alliteration "a
poltroon, a pantaloon, and a pig," that Henry heard him.

What Signor Antonio replied has not been preserved, but it is stated that
he was first to seek a reconciliation, not liking, he said, Spanish
assassinations.

Meantime the double marriage project was for a season at least suspended,
and the alliance between the two republics went forwards. Van der Myle,
appointed ambassador to Venice, soon afterwards arrived in Paris, where
he made a very favourable impression, and was highly lauded by Aerssens
in his daily correspondence with Barneveld. No portentous shadow of
future and fatal discord between those statesmen fell upon the cheerful
scene. Before the year closed, he arrived at his post, and was received
with great distinction, despite the obstacles thrown in his way by Spain
and other powers; the ambassador of France itself, de Champigny, having
privately urged that he ought to be placed on the same footing with the
envoys of Savoy and of Florence.

Van der Myle at starting committed the trifling fault of styling the
States-General "most illustrious" (illustrissimi) instead of "most
serene," the title by which Venice designated herself.

The fault was at once remedied, however, Priuli the Doge seating the
Dutch ambassador on his right hand at his solemn reception, and giving
directions that van der Myle should be addressed as Excellency, his post
being assigned him directly after his seniors, the ambassadors of Pope,
Emperor, and kings. The same precedence was settled in Paris, while
Aerssens, who did not consider himself placed in a position of greater
usefulness by his formal installation as ambassador, received private
intimation from Henry, with whom he was on terms of great confidence and
intimacy, that he should have private access to the King as frequently
and as in formally as before. The theory that the ambassador,
representing the personality of his sovereign, may visit the monarch to
whom he is accredited, without ceremony and at his own convenience, was
as rarely carried into practice in the sixteenth century as in the
nineteen