aggrandizement of the House of Austria. The States-General must disband
no troops, but hold themselves in readiness."

Secretary of State Villeroy held the same language, but it was easy to
trace beneath his plausible exterior a secret determination to traverse
the plans of his sovereign. "The Cleve affair must lead to war," he
said. "The Spaniard, considering how necessary it is for him to have a
prince there at his devotion, can never quietly suffer Brandenburg and
Neuburg to establish themselves in those territories. The support thus
gained by the States-General would cause the loss of the Spanish
Netherlands."

This was the view of Henry, too, but the Secretary of State, secretly
devoted to the cause of Spain, looked upon the impending war with much
aversion.

"All that can come to his Majesty from war," he said, "is the glory of
having protected the right. Counterbalance this with the fatigue, the
expense, and the peril of a great conflict, after our long repose, and
you will find this to be buying glory too dearly."

When a Frenchman talked of buying glory too dearly, it seemed probable
that the particular kind of glory was not to his taste.

Henry had already ordered the officers, then in France, of the 4000
French infantry kept in the States' service at his expense to depart at
once to Holland, and he privately announced his intention of moving to
the frontier at the head of 30,000 men.

'Yet not only Villeroy, but the Chancellor and the Constable, while