dici that she likewise had often heard him say so,
and induced her to take high ground on the subject in her interviews with
Aerssens. The luckless queen, who was always in want of money to satisfy
the insatiable greed of her favourites, and to buy off the enmity of the
great princes, was very vehement--although she knew as much of those
transactions as of the finances of Prester John or the Lama of Thibet--in
maintaining this claim of her government upon the States.

"After talking with the ministers," said Aerssens, "I had an interview
with the Queen. I knew that she had been taught her lesson, to insist on
the payment of the Third. So I did not speak at all of the matter, but
talked exclusively and at length of the French regiments in the States'
service. She was embarrassed, and did not know exactly what to say. At
last, without replying a single word to what I had been saying, she
became very red in the face, and asked me if I were not instructed to
speak of the money due to England. Whereupon I spoke in the sense already
indicated. She interrupted me by saying she had a perfect recollection
that the late king intended and understood that we were to pay the Third
to England, and had talked with her very seriously on the subject. If he
were living, he would think it very strange, she said, that we refused;
and so on.

"Soissons, too, pretends to remember perfectly that such were the King's
intentions. 'Tis a very strange thing, Sir. Every one knows now the
secrets of the late king, if you are willing to listen. Yet he was not in
the habit of taking all the world into his confidence. The Queen takes
her opinions as they give them to her. 'Tis a very good princess, but I
am sorry she is so ignorant of affairs. As she says she remembers, one is
obliged to say one believes her. But I, who knew the King so intimately,
and saw him so constantly, know that he could only have said that the
Third was paid in acquittal of his debts to and for account of the King
of England, and not that we were to make restitution thereof. The
Chancellor tells me my refusal has been taken as an affront by the Queen,
and Puysieux says it is a contempt which she can't swallow."

Aerssens on his part remained firm; his pertinacity being the greater as
he thoroughly understood the subject which he was talking about, an
advantage which was rarely shared in by those with whom he conversed. The
Queen, highly scandalized by his demeanour, became fro