to effect a permanent severance of the provinces so lately banded together in a common union.  “To, divide them,” wrote Tassis, in a very confidential letter, “no better method can be found than to amuse them with this peace negotiation.  Some are ready for a pacification from their desire of repose, some from their fear of war, some from the differences which exist among themselves, and which it is especially important to keep alive.”  Above all things, it was desirable to maintain the religious distraction till Maestricht had been taken.  That siege was the key to the whole situation.  If the separate Walloon accord could be quietly made in a corner, while Parma was battering that stronghold on the Meuse, and while decorous negotiation was smoothly holding its course on the Rhine, much disorganization, it was hoped, would be handsomely accomplished before the end of the year.

“As for a suspension of arms,” wrote Alexander to Terranova, on the 21st of May, “the longer ’tis deferred the better.  With regard to Maestricht, everything depends upon it that we possess, or desire to possess.  Truly, if the Prince of Orange can relieve the city he will do it.  If he does so, neither will this expedition of ours, nor any other expedition, be brought to a good end.  As soon as men are aware that our affairs are looking badly, they will come again to a true union, and all will join together, in hope to accomplish their boasts.”  Therefore, it was natural that the peace-wrights of Cologne should industriously ply their task.

It is not desirable to disturb much of that learned dust, after its three centuries’ repose.  A rapid sketch of the course of the proceedings, with an indication of the spirit which animated the contending parties, will be all that is necessary.  They came and they separated with precisely opposite views.  “The desires of Terranova and of the estates,” says the royalist, Tassis, “were diametrically contrary, to each other.  The King wished that the exercise of the Roman Catholic religion should be exclusively established, and the absolute prerogative preserved in its integrity.”  On the other hand, the provinces desired their charters and a religious’ peace.  In these perpetual lines and curves ran the asymptotical negotiation from beginning to end—­and so it might have run for two centuries, without hope of coincidence.  Neither party was yet vanquished.  The freshly united provinces were no readier now than before to admit that the Holy Office formed part of their national institutions.  The despotic faction was not prepared to renounce that establishment.  Foiled, but not disheartened, sat the Inquisition, like a beldame, upon the border, impotently threatening the land whence she had been for ever excluded; while industrious as the Parcae, distaff in hand, sat, in Cologne, the inexorable three—­Spain, the Empire, and Rome—­ grimly, spinning and severing the web of mortal destinies.