conscience he had scarcely clean hands. He had very recently accepted a
present of twenty thousand florins from the King of France. That this
was a bribe by which his services were to be purchased for a cause not in
harmony with his own convictions it would be unjust to say. We of a
later generation, who have had the advantage of looking through the
portfolio of President Jeannin, and of learning the secret intentions of
that diplomatist and of his master, can fully understand however that
there was more than sufficient cause at the time for suspecting the
purity of the great Advocate's conduct. We are perfectly aware that the
secret instructions of Henry gave his plenipotentiaries almost unlimited
power to buy up as many influential personages in the Netherlands as
could be purchased. So they would assist in making the king master of
the United Provinces at the proper moment there was scarcely any price
that he was not willing to pay.

Especially Prince Maurice, his cousin, and the Advocate of Holland, were
to be secured by life pensions, property, offices, and dignities, all
which Jeannin might offer to an almost unlimited amount, if by such means
those great personages could possibly be induced to perform the king's
work.

There is no record that the president ever held out such baits at this
epoch to the prince. There could never be a doubt however in any one's
mind that if the political chief of the Orange-Nassau house ever wished
to make himself the instrument by which France should supplant Spain in
the tyranny of the Netherlands, he might always name his own price.
Jeannin never insulted him with any such trading propositions. As for
Barneveld, he avowed long years afterwards that he had accepted the
twenty thousand florins, and that the king had expressly exacted secrecy
in regard to the transaction. He declared however that the money was a