Namur and Antwerp had produced him no fruit, saving the character, which his antagonist now fully succeeded in establishing for him, of an unscrupulous and artful schemer.  This reputation was enhanced by the discovery of the intercepted letters, and by the ingenuity and eagerness with which they were turned to account against him by the Prince, by Saint Aldegonde, and all the anti-Catholic party.  The true key to his reluctance against despatching the troops by land, the states had not obtained.  They did not dream of his romantic designs upon England, and were therefore excusable in attributing a still deeper perfidy to his arrangements.

Even had he been sent to the Netherlands in the full possession of his faculties, he would have been no match in political combinations for his powerful antagonists.  Hoodwinked and fettered, suspected by his master, baffled, bewildered, irritated by his adversary, what could he do but plunge from one difficulty to another and oscillate between extravagant menace, and desponding concession, until his hopes and life were wasted quite away.  His instructions came from Philip through Perez, and that most profound dissembler, as we have seen, systematically deceived the Governor, with the view of eliciting treasonable matters, Philip wishing, if possible, to obtain proofs of Don John’s secret designs against his own crown.  Thus every letter from Spain was filled with false information and with lying persuasions.  No doubt the Governor considered himself entitled to wear a crown, and meant to win it, if not in Africa, then in England, or wherever fate might look propitiously upon him.  He was of the stuff of which crusaders and dynasty founders had been made, at a somewhat earlier epoch.  Who could have conquered the holy sepulchre, or wrested a crown from its lawful wearer, whether in Italy, Muscovy, the Orient, or in the British Ultima Thule, more bravely than this imperial bastard, this valiant and romantic adventurer?  Unfortunately, he came a few centuries too late.  The days when dynasties were founded, and European thrones appropriated by a few foreign freebooters, had passed, and had not yet returned.  He had come to the Netherlands desirous of smoothing over difficulties and of making a peaceful termination to that rebellion a steppingstone to his English throne.  He was doomed to a profound disappointment, a broken heart, and a premature grave, instead of the glittering baubles which he pursued.  Already he found himself bitterly deceived in his hopes.  The obstinate Netherlanders would not love him, notwithstanding the good wishes he had manifested.  They would not even love the King of Spain, notwithstanding the blessings which his Majesty was declared to have heaped upon them.  On the contrary, they persisted in wasting their perverse affections upon the pestilent Prince of Orange.  That heretic was leading them to destruction, for he was showing them the road to liberty, and nothing, in the eyes of the Governor,