The Advocate was not profoundly impressed by these revelations. He was
too experienced a statesman to doubt that in times when civil and
religious passion was running high there was never lack of fishers in
troubled waters, and that if a body of conspirators could secure a
handsome compensation by selling their country to a foreign prince, they
would always be ready to do it.

But although believed by Maurice to be himself a stipendiary of Spain,
he was above suspecting the Prince of any share in the low and stupid
intrigue which du Agean had imagined or disclosed. That the Stadholder
was ambitious of greater power, he hardly doubted, but that he was
seeking to acquire it by such corrupt and circuitous means, he did not
dream. He confidentially communicated the plot as in duty bound to some
members of the States, and had the Prince been accused in any
conversation or statement of being privy to the scheme, he would have
thought himself bound to mention it to him. The story came to the ears
of Maurice however, and helped to feed his wrath against the Advocate,
as if he were responsible for a plot, if plot it were, which had been
concocted by his own deadliest enemies. The Prince wrote a letter
alluding to this communication of Langerac and giving much alarm to that
functionary. He thought his despatches must have been intercepted and
proposed in future to write always by special courier. Barneveld thought
that unnecessary except when there were more important matters than those
appeared to him to be and requiring more haste.

"The letter of his Excellency," said he to the Ambassador, "is caused in
my opinion by the fact that some of the deputies to this assembly to whom
I secretly imparted your letter or its substance did not rightly
comprehend or report it. You did not say that his Excellency had any