tatesman, to deal: the
intense and imperious passion of a greybeard for a woman of sixteen.

For out of the cauldron where the miscellaneous elements of universal war
were bubbling rose perpetually the fantastic image of Margaret
Montmorency: the fatal beauty at whose caprice the heroic sword of Ivry
and Cahors was now uplifted and now sheathed.

Aerssens was baffled, and reported the humours of the court where he
resided as changing from hour to hour. To the last he reported that all
the mighty preparations then nearly completed "might evaporate in smoke"
if the Princess of Conde should come back. Every ambassador in Paris was
baffled. Peter Pecquius was as much in the dark as Don Inigo de Cardenas,
as Ubaldini or Edmonds. No one save Sully, Aerssens, Barneveld, and the
King knew the extensive arrangements and profound combinations which had
been made for the war. Yet not Sully, Aerssens, Barneveld, or the King,
knew whether or not the war would really be made.

Barneveld had to deal with this perplexing question day by day. His
correspondence with his ambassador at Henry's court was enormous, and we
have seen that the Ambassador was with the King almost daily; sleeping or
waking; at dinner or the chase; in the cabinet or the courtyard.

But the Advocate was also obliged to carry in his arms, as it were, the
brood of snarling, bickering, cross-grained German princes, to supply
them with money, with arms, with counsel, with brains; to keep them awake
when they went to sleep, to steady them in their track, to teach them to
go alone. He had the congress at Hall in Suabia to supervise and direct;
he had to see that the ambassadors of the new republic, upon which they
in reality were already half dependent and chafing at their dependence,
were treated with the consideration due to the proud position which the
Commonwealth had gained. Questions of etiquette were at that moment
questions of vitality. He instructed his ambassadors to leave the
congress on the spot if they were ranked after the envoys of princes who
were only feudatories of the Emperor. The Dutch ambassadors, "recognising
and relying upon no superiors but God and their sword," placed themselves
according to seniority with the representatives of proudest kings.

He had to extemporize a system of free international communication with
all the powers of the earth--with the Turk at Constantinople, with the
Czar of Muscovy; with the potentates of the Baltic, with