This moderate but heartfelt appeal to the better nature of the Duke, if he had a better nature, met with no immediate response.

While matters were in this condition, a special envoy arrived out of France, despatched by the King and Queen-mother, on the first reception of the recent intelligence from Antwerp.  M. de Mirambeau, the ambassador, whose son had been killed in the Fury, brought letters of credence to the states of the; Union and to the Prince of Orange.  He delivered also a short confidential note, written in her own hand, from Catherine de Medici to the Prince, to the following effect: 

“My cousin,—­The King, my son, and myself, send you Monsieur de Mirambeau, to prove to you that we do not believe—­for we esteem you an honorable man—­that you would manifest ingratitude to my son, and to those who have followed him for the welfare of your country.  We feel that you have too much affection for one who has the support of so powerful a prince as the King of France, as to play him so base a trick.  Until I learn the truth, I shall not renounce the good hope which I have always indulged—­that you would never have invited my son to your country, without intending to serve him faithfully.  As long as you do this, you may ever reckon on the support of all who belong to him.

“Your good Cousin,

“Catherine.”

It would have been very difficult to extract much information or much comfort from this wily epistle.  The menace was sufficiently plain, the promise disagreeably vague.  Moreover, a letter from the same Catherine de Medici, had been recently found in a casket at the Duke’s lodgings in Antwerp.  In that communication, she had distinctly advised her son to re-establish the Roman Catholic religion, assuring him that by so doing, he would be enabled to marry the Infanta of Spain.  Nevertheless, the Prince, convinced that it was his duty to bridge over the deep and fatal chasm which had opened between the French Prince and the provinces, if an honorable reconciliation were possible, did not attach an undue importance either to the stimulating or to the upbraiding portion of the communication from Catherine.  He was most anxious to avert the chaos which he saw returning.  He knew that while the tempers of Rudolph, of the English Queen, and of the Protestant princes of Germany, and the internal condition of the Netherlands remained the same, it were madness to provoke the government of France, and thus gain an additional enemy, while losing their only friend.  He did not renounce the hope of forming all the Netherlands—­excepting of course the Walloon provinces already reconciled to Philip—­into one independent commonwealth, freed for ever from Spanish tyranny.  A dynasty from a foreign house he was willing to accept, but only on condition that the new royal line should become naturalized in the Netherlands, should, conform itself to the strict constitutional compact established,