services, admired his intellect, or felt gratitude for his guidance.

A fierce controversy--to which at a later period it will be necessary to
call the reader's attention, because it is intimately connected with dark
scenes afterwards to be enacted--took place between the late ambassador
and Cornelis van der Myle. Meantime Barneveld pursued the policy which
he had marked out for the States-General in regard to France.

Certainly it was a difficult problem. There could be no doubt that
metamorphosed France could only be a dangerous ally for the Republic.
It was in reality impossible that she should be her ally at all.
And this Barneveld knew. Still it was better, so he thought, for the
Netherlands that France should exist than that it should fall into utter
decomposition. France, though under the influence of Spain, and doubly
allied by marriage contracts to Spain, was better than Spain itself in
the place of France. This seemed to be the only choice between two
evils. Should the whole weight of the States-General be thrown into the
scale of the malcontent and mutinous princes against the established but
tottering government of France, it was difficult to say how soon Spain
might literally, as well as inferentially, reign in Paris.

Between the rebellion and the legitimate government, therefore, Barneveld
did not hesitate. France, corporate France, with which the Republic had
bean so long in close and mutually advantageous alliance, and from whose
late monarch she had received such constant and valuable benefits, was in
the Advocate's opinion the only power to be recognised, Papal and Spanish
though it was. The advantage of an alliance with the fickle, self-
seeking, and ever changing mutiny, that was seeking to make use of
Protestantism to effect its own ends, was in his eyes rather specious
than real.