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 at the price.  La Motte higgled very hard for more, and talked pathetically of his services and his wounds—­for he had been a most distinguished and courageous campaigner—­but Alonzo was implacable.  Moreover, one Robert Bien-Aime, Prior of Renty, was present at all the conferences.  This ecclesiastic was a busy intriguer, but not very adroit.  He was disposed to make himself useful to government, for he had set his heart upon putting the mitre of Saint Omer upon his head, and he had accordingly composed a very ingenious libel upon the Prince of Orange, in which production, “although the Prior did not pretend to be Apelles or Lysippus,” he hoped that the Governor-General would recognize a portrait colored to the life.  This accomplished artist was, however, not so successful as he was picturesque and industrious.  He was inordinately vain of his services, thinking himself, said Alonzo, splenetically, worthy to be carried in a procession like a little saint, and as he had a busy brain, but an unruly tongue, it will be seen that he possessed a remarkable faculty of making himself unpleasant.  This was not the way to earn his bishopric.  La Motte, through the candid communications of the Prior, found himself