business: but ordered him to follow him to Mentz; and at length[210]
declared him Counsellor to the Queen of Sweden and her Ambassador at the
Court of France.

The authority of Oxenstiern was so great that this kind of nomination
needed not the Queen's confirmation: it was not till almost two years
after[211] that Christina ratified by her letters Grotius's embassy.
Before their arrival he enjoyed the same honours and prerogatives as if
the Queen herself had nominated him.

As soon as he could depend upon an establishment, he purposed to make it
known by some public act that he considered himself no longer as a
Dutchman. On the 13th of July, 1634[212], he sent his brother letters
for the Prince of Orange and the Dutch: but desired him to read them
first himself, and advise with the Counsellor Reigersberg and Beaumont
about them. "I have ceased, says he in another place[213], to be a
Dutchman since I entered into the service of Sweden; which I have
sufficiently intimated to the States of Holland. I have written to them,
but not as their subject. Thus the Spaniards used to act in such cases,
as Mariana informs us in several places of his History of Spain. When I
bad adieu to the United Provinces (he writes again[214]) I signified to
them that I was a member of another nation; that I should give myself
little trouble about what might be said or thought of it; and that I
reckoned never to see the Country again." We may judge by these
expressions that his patience was at length worn out.

He wrote to the City of Rotterdam, which had deferred nominating a
Pensionary since the sentence passed against Grotius, that they might
now chuse one, since they ought no longer to look on him as a Dutchman.