favour with Spain by aiding in the ruin of one whom he knew and Spain
knew to be her determined foe, did all he could through his ambassador to
frustrate their efforts and bring on a catastrophe. The States-General
and Maurice were now on as confidential terms with Carleton as they were
cold and repellent to Boississe and du Maurier.

"To recall to them the benefits of the King," said du Maurier, "is to
beat the air. And then Aerssens bewitches them, and they imagine that
after having played runaway horses his Majesty will be only too happy to
receive them back, caress them, and, in order to have their friendship,
approve everything they have been doing right or wrong."

Aerssens had it all his own way, and the States-General had just paid him
12,000 francs in cash on the ground that Langerac's salary was larger
than his had been when at the head of the same embassy many years before.

His elevation into the body of nobles, which Maurice had just stocked
with five other of his partisans, was accounted an additional affront
to France, while on the other hand the Queen-Mother, having through
Epernon's assistance made her escape from Blois, where she had been
kept in durance since the death of Concini, now enumerated among other
grievances for which she was willing to take up arms against her son
that the King's government had favoured Barneveld.

It was strange that all the devotees of Spain--Mary de' Medici, and
Epernon, as well as James I. and his courtiers--should be thus embittered
against the man who had sold the Netherlands to Spain.

At last the Prince told the French ambassadors that the "people of the
Provinces considered their persistent intercessions an invasion of their