he rebellious heretics left to their fate.
And this condition had been placed before him with such arrogance that he
had rejected the whole scheme. Henry was not the man to do anything
dishonourable at the dictation of another sovereign. He was also not the
man to be ignorant that the friendship of the Provinces was necessary to
him, that cordial friendship between France and Spain was impossible, and
that to allow Spain to reoccupy that splendid possession between his own
realms and Germany, from which she had been driven by the Hollanders in
close alliance with himself, would be unworthy of the veriest schoolboy
in politics. But Henry was dead, and a Medici reigned in his place, whose
whole thought was to make herself agreeable to Spain.

Aerssens, adroit, prying, experienced, unscrupulous, knew very well that
these double Spanish marriages were resolved upon, and that the
inevitable condition refused by the King would be imposed upon his widow.
He so informed the States-General, and it was known to the French
government that he had informed them. His position soon became almost
untenable, not because he had given this information, but because the
information and the inference made from it were correct.

It will be observed that the policy of the Advocate was to preserve
friendly relations between France and England, and between both and the
United Provinces. It was for this reason that he submitted to the
exhortations and denunciations of the English ambassadors. It was for
this that he kept steadily in view the necessity of dealing with and
supporting corporate France, the French government, when there were many
reasons for feeling sympathy with the internal rebellion against that
government. Maurice felt differently. He was connected by blood or
alliance with more than one of the princes now perpetually in revolt.
Bouillon was his brother-in-law, the sister of Conde was his brother's
wife. Another cousin, the Elector-Palatine, was already encouraging
distant and extravagant hopes of the Imperial crown. It was not unnatural
that he should feel promptings of ambition and sympathy difficult to avow
even to himself, and that he should feel resentment against the man by
whom this secret policy was traversed in the well-considered interest of
the Republican government.

Aerssens, who, with the keen instinct of self-advancement was already
attaching himself to Maurice as to the wheels of the chariot going
steadily up th