the errand-bearers of the new king, whom they believed incapable of
being stirred to an honourable action.

The whole political atmosphere of Europe was mephitic with falsehood, and
certainly the gales which blew from the English court at the accession of
James were not fragrant, but De Rosny had himself come over from France
under false pretences. He had been charged by his master to represent
Henry's childish scheme, which he thought so gigantic, for the
regeneration of Europe, as a project of his own, which he was determined
to bring to execution, even at the risk of infidelity to his sovereign,
and the first element in that whole policy was to carry on war underhand
against a power with which his master had just sworn to preserve peace.
In that age at least it was not safe for politicians to call each other
hard names.

The very next day De Rosny had a long private interview with James at
Greenwich. Being urged to speak without reserve, the ambassador depicted
the privy counsellors to the king as false to his instructions, traitors
to the best interests of their country, the humble servants of Spain, and
most desirous to make their royal master the slave of that power, under
the name of its ally. He expressed the opinion, accordingly, that James
would do better in obeying only the promptings of his own superior
wisdom, rather than the suggestions of the intriguers about him. The
adroit De Rosny thus softly insinuated to the flattered monarch that the
designs of France were the fresh emanations of his own royal intellect.
It was the whim of James to imagine himself extremely like Henry of
Bourbon in character, and he affected to take the wittiest, bravest, most
adventurous, and most adroit knight-errant that ever won and wore a crown
as his perpetual model.