of this nobleman’s death.  He died of poison, they said, administered to him “in oysters,” by command of the Prince of Orange, who had likewise made a point of standing over him on his death-bed, for the express purpose of sneering at the Catholic ceremonies by which his dying agonies were solaced.  Such were the tales which grave historians have recorded concerning the death of Maximilian of Bossu, who owed so much to the Prince.  The command of the states’ army, a yearly pension of five thousand florins, granted at the especial request of Orange but a few months before, and the profound words of regret in the private letter jest cited, are a sufficient answer to such slanders.

The personal courage and profound military science of Parma were invaluable to the royal cause; but his subtle, unscrupulous, and subterranean combinations of policy were even more fruitful at this period.  No man ever understood the art of bribery more thoroughly or practised it more skillfully.  He bought a politician, or a general, or a grandee, or a regiment of infantry, usually at the cheapest price at which those articles could be purchased, and always with the utmost delicacy with which such traffic could be conducted.  Men conveyed themselves to government for a definite price—­fixed accurately in florins and groats, in places and pensions—­while a decent gossamer of conventional phraseology was ever allowed to float over the nakedness of unblushing treason.  Men high in station, illustrious by ancestry, brilliant in valor, huckstered themselves, and swindled a confiding country for as ignoble motives as ever led counterfeiters or bravoes to the gallows, but they were dealt with in public as if actuated only by the loftiest principles.  Behind their ancient shields, ostentatiously emblazoned with fidelity to church and king, they thrust forth their itching palms with the mendicity which would be hardly credible, were it not attested by the monuments more perennial than brass, of their own letters and recorded conversations.

Already, before the accession of Parma to power, the true way to dissever the provinces had been indicated by the famous treason of the Seigneur de la Motte.  This nobleman commanded a regiment in the service of the states-general, and was Governor of Gravelines.  On promise of forgiveness for all past disloyalty, of being continued in the same military posts under Philip which he then held for the patriots, and of a “merced” large enough to satisfy his most avaricious dreams, he went over to the royal government.  The negotiation was conducted by Alonzo Curiel, financial agent of the King, and was not very nicely handled.  The paymaster, looking at the affair purely as a money transaction—­which in truth it was—­had been disposed to drive rather too hard a bargain.  He offered only fifty thousand crowns for La Motte and his friend Baron Montigny, and assured his government that those gentlemen, with the soldiers under their command, were very dear