A flock of diplomatists, professional or volunteers, openly accredited or
secret, were now flying busily about through the troubled atmosphere,
indicating the coming storm in which they revelled. The keen-sighted,
subtle, but dangerously intriguing ambassador of the Republic, Francis
Aerssens, had his hundred eyes at all the keyholes in Paris, that centre
of ceaseless combination and conspiracy, and was besides in almost daily
confidential intercourse with the King. Most patiently and minutely he
kept the Advocate informed, almost from hour to hour, of every web that
was spun, every conversation public or whispered in which important
affairs were treated anywhere and by anybody. He was all-sufficient as a
spy and intelligencer, although not entirely trustworthy as a counsellor.
Still no man on the whole could scan the present or forecast the future
more accurately than he was able to do from his advantageous position and
his long experience of affairs.

There was much general jealousy between the States and the despotic king,
who loved to be called the father of the Republic and to treat the
Hollanders as his deeply obliged and very ungrateful and miserly little
children. The India trade was a sore subject, Henry having throughout
the negotiations sought to force or wheedle the States into renouncing
that commerce at the command of Spain, because he wished to help himself
to it afterwards, and being now in the habit of secretly receiving Isaac
Le Maire and other Dutch leaders in that lucrative monopoly, who lay
disguised in Paris and in the house of Zamet--but not concealed from
Aerssens, who pledged himself to break, the neck of their enterprise--and
were planning with the King a French East India Company in opposition to
that of the Netherlands.

On the whole, however, despite these commercial intrigues which Barneveld
through the aid of Aerssens was enabled to baffle, there was much