France, and the annihilation of Austrian power east and west, these were
the vast ideas with which that teeming Bourbon brain was filled. It is
the instinct both of poetic and of servile minds to associate a sentiment
of grandeur with such fantastic dreams, but usually on condition that the
dreamer wears a crown. When the regenerator of society appears with a
wisp of straw upon his head, unappreciative society is apt to send him
back to his cell. There, at least, his capacity for mischief is limited.

If to do be as grand as to imagine what it were good to do, then the
Dutchmen in Hell's Mouth and the Porcupine fighting Universal Monarchy
inch by inch and pike to pike, or trying conclusions with the ice-bears
of Nova Zembla, or capturing whole Portuguese fleets in the Moluccas,
were effecting as great changes in the world, and doing perhaps as much
for the advancement of civilization, as James of the two Britains and
Henry of France and Navarre in those his less heroic days, were likely to
accomplish. History has long known the results.

The ambassador did his work admirably. The king embraced him in a
transport of enthusiasm, vowed by all that was most sacred to accept the
project in all its details, and exacted from the ambassador in his turn
an oath on the Eucharist never to reveal, except to his master, the
mighty secrets of their conference.

The interview had lasted four hours. When it was concluded, James
summoned Cecil, and in presence of the ambassador and of some of the
counsellors, lectured him soundly on his presumption in disobeying the
royal commands in his recent negotiations with De Rosny. He then
announced his decision to ally himself strictly with France against Spain
in consequence of the revelations just made to him, and of course to
espouse the cause of the United Provinces. Telling the crest-fallen