of him and of me:  they, will look on me as Ambassador only in name; and on him as Ambassador in fact, though he has not the name:  nay he actually allows himself to be treated at home as if he were Ambassador, and to be written to as if he had the title.  It is indeed very hard that I, who am advanced in years, should have disputes with a hot-headed youth.”  This quarrel gave him great uneasiness:  he writes to Oxenstiern[342], “I beg it as a favour of your Sublimity, that if I can be of any use to you, you would be pleased to protect me, as you have done hitherto.  I have had nothing in view in all I have done but the welfare of Sweden; and it has cost me much pains to raise, by my words and actions, the credit of a nation hitherto little known in this country.  If I cannot serve with utility, I had much rather return to the condition of a private man, than be a burden to the kingdom, or dishonour myself.”

Schmalz lived on very ill terms with Crusius, a Swedish Lord, whom Grotius, as we have just seen, had presented to the King.  Notwithstanding the grounds of complaint which the Ambassador had against Schmalz, he thought the public service required him to reconcile them, and for this end he often made them dine with him.  One day, at the Swedish Banker’s, both rose from table after dinner heated with wine, and came together to Grotius’s:  there was only his lady at home.  They quarrelled, and Schmalz had the impudence to call Crusius several times a rascal; with the addition of some threatening gestures.  Crusius, highly provoked, gave him a box on the ear, and an English colonel in company was so enraged against Schmalz, that had it not been for Grotius’s lady he would have run him through.  Notwithstanding this gross insult, Schmalz and Crusius[343] were reconciled at Grotius’s house; but Schmalz still continued his extravagancies.  He had the indiscretion one time to let his tongue loose against the Duke of Weymar:  Baron Erlac, who was attached to that Prince, was highly incensed, and the consequences might have been very fatal.  Grotius again employed his good offices to pacify Erlac.  But this wrought no change in Schmalz’s behaviour towards the Swedish Ambassador.  In a letter of the sixteenth of October, 1638[344], Grotius observes:  “It is near two months since Schmalz was to see me, though I have been ill; his reasons I neither know nor enquire.  I am conscious he has no subject of complaint against me; but I have much to complain of him.  He will return to you richer than he came out:  I do not envy him the money, which, it is said, he received above two months ago from the French; being firmly resolved to adhere to the rule I have laid down, and hitherto observed, to accept of nothing from them.”  Schmalz continued to seek every opportunity of injuring Grotius[345], who, he said, was a burden on Sweden; and Grotius[346] was persuaded that Schmalz had betrayed the secret of affairs to the French Ministry in order to prejudice him.  Schmalz returned to Sweden,