correspondents, the States-General, might be supposed already to know, if
it were one; there had been a revolution in the royal bed-chamber; the
Spanish cook of the young queen had arrived from Madrid; the Duke of
Nevers was behaving very oddly at Vienna; such communications, and others
equally startling, were the staple of his correspondence.

Still he was honest enough, very mild, perfectly docile to Barneveld,
dependent upon his guidance, and fervently attached to that statesman so
long as his wheel was going up the hill. Moreover, his industry in
obtaining information and his passion for imparting it made it probable
that nothing very momentous would be neglected should it be laid before
him, but that his masters, and especially the Advocate, would be enabled
to judge for themselves as to the attention due to it.

"With this you will be apprised of some very high and weighty matters,"
he wrote privately and in cipher to Barneveld, "which you will make use
of according to your great wisdom and forethought for the country's
service."

He requested that the matter might also be confided to M. van der Myle,
that he might assist his father-in-law, so overburdened with business, in
the task of deciphering the communication. He then stated that he had
been "very earnestly informed three days before by M. du Agean"--member
of the privy council of France--"that it had recently come to the King's
ears, and his Majesty knew it to be authentic, that there was a secret
and very dangerous conspiracy in Holland of persons belonging to the
Reformed religion in which others were also mixed. This party held very
earnest and very secret correspondence with the factious portion of the
Contra-Remonstrants both in the Netherlands and France, seeking under
pretext of the religious dissensions or by means of them to confer the