h a view by negotiating with these persons to discover the intentions
as well of one side as the other."

The Advocate was not profoundly impressed by these revelations. He was
too experienced a statesman to doubt that in times when civil and
religious passion was running high there was never lack of fishers in
troubled waters, and that if a body of conspirators could secure a
handsome compensation by selling their country to a foreign prince, they
would always be ready to do it.

But although believed by Maurice to be himself a stipendiary of Spain, he
was above suspecting the Prince of any share in the low and stupid
intrigue which du Agean had imagined or disclosed. That the Stadholder
was ambitious of greater power, he hardly doubted, but that he was
seeking to acquire it by such corrupt and circuitous means, he did not
dream. He confidentially communicated the plot as in duty bound to some
members of the States, and had the Prince been accused in any
conversation or statement of being privy to the scheme, he would have
thought himself bound to mention it to him. The story came to the ears of
Maurice however, and helped to feed his wrath against the Advocate, as if
he were responsible for a plot, if plot it were, which had been concocted
by his own deadliest enemies. The Prince wrote a letter alluding to this
communication of Langerac and giving much alarm to that functionary. He
thought his despatches must have been intercepted and proposed in future
to write always by special courier. Barneveld thought that unnecessary
except when there were more important matters than those appeared to him
to be and requiring more haste.

"The letter of his Excellency," said he to the Ambassador, "is caused in
my opinion by the fact that some of the deputies to this assembly to whom
I secretly imparted your letter or its substance did not rightly
comprehend or report it. You did not say that his Excellency had any such
design or project, but that it had been said that the Contra-Remonstrants
were entertaining such a scheme. I would have shown the letter to him
myself, but I thought it not fair, for good reasons, to make M. du Agean
known as the informant. I do not think it amiss for you to write yourself
to his Excellency and tell him what is said, but whether it would be
proper to give up the name of your author, I think doubtful. At all
events one must consult about it. We live in a strange world, and one
knows not whom to tr