The schemes were wild enough perhaps, but their very existence, which is
undoubted, is another proof, if more proof were wanted, of the lamentable
tendency, in times of civil and religious dissension, of political
passion to burn out the very first principles of patriotism.

It is also important, on account of the direct influence exerted by these
intrigues upon subsequent events of the gravest character, to throw a
beam of light on matters which were thought to have been shrouded for
ever in impenetrable darkness.

Langerac, the States' Ambassador in Paris, was the very reverse of his
predecessor, the wily, unscrupulous, and accomplished Francis Aerssens.
The envoys of the Republic were rarely dull, but Langerac was a
simpleton. They were renowned for political experience, skill,
familiarity with foreign languages, knowledge of literature, history,
and public law; but he was ignorant, spoke French very imperfectly,
at a court where not a human being could address him in his own tongue,
had never been employed in diplomacy or in high office of any kind,
and could carry but small personal weight at a post where of all others
the representative of the great republic should have commanded deference
both for his own qualities and for the majesty of his government. At a
period when France was left without a master or a guide the Dutch
ambassador, under a becoming show of profound respect, might really have
governed the country so far as regarded at least the all important
relations which bound the two nations together. But Langerac was a mere
picker-up of trifles, a newsmonger who wrote a despatch to-day with
information which a despatch was written on the morrow to contradict,
while in itself conveying additional intelligence absolutely certain to
be falsified soon afterwards. The Emperor of Germany had gone mad;
Prince Maurice had been assassinated in the Hague, a fact which his