exactly followed his instructions.  The Cardinal seemed displeased with those who had given them; and added that if the High Chancellor was not content with the peace between Sweden and Poland, it was from private views, because he lost the government of Prussia.  After this sharp conversation, the Cardinal appeared more calm; and said, that he had nothing to do but hear what might be advanced, and would not judge till he had seen what was done.  Grotius answered, that the High Chancellor would always act as a man of honour and a man of courage.

November 5, Grotius had an audience of the King, who complained much, that after having been at so great expence, to the prejudice of his own affairs, on account of the Germans, they should break their treaties.

Grotius went to Ruel on the 14th of December[264], again to solicit the payment of what was due to Sweden.  He found there a courier from the Marquis de St. Chaumont, who delivered to him some letters he had brought with him from the High Chancellor.  Grotius suspected that they had been opened, for besides their being dirty, the Courier had been arrived near a month; and he gave very bad reasons both for the condition of the letters, and his not delivering them sooner; he said they had fallen into the sea; that he had been at Paris, but could not find Grotius’s house; and that he had been since kept at Ruel.  What made Grotius easy, was that these letters were written with so much circumspection, had they been intercepted, the reading of them would rather have been advantageous than hurtful to Sweden.  The French Court’s fears lest the Swedes should conclude a separate peace made the Ministers promise him speedy payment of the arrears of the subsidies:  Bullion assured him that he would without delay advance three hundred thousand Francs at several small payments (which Grotius disliked) and that he had already given orders for paying other two hundred thousand Francs:  Servien promised that France would make greater efforts next campaign, if Sweden would continue the war.

In the beginning of 1636[265] Grotius went to see the Cardinal, who complained bitterly that Grotius had written to Holland that the affairs of France were in a deplorable situation, and the French still on the point of making their peace.  Grotius assured him it was a pure calumny:  the Cardinal pretended that it was known to the French Ambassadors at the Hague.  Grotius assured him these false reports owed their rise to the artifices of Pau and Aersens his declared enemies, that Camerarius the Swedish Ambassador in Holland, with whom he corresponded by letters, would attest the contrary; that this report was probably occasioned by an article inserted in the Brussels Gazette, that his letters had been intercepted, representing France as in the greatest declension, of which he had never had a thought; and that this was done with design to make him lose the friendship of his patrons.  He added, that he had forgot his