Strange too as it may now seem to us, a reconciliation of the Netherlands with Philip was not thought an impossibility by other experienced and sagacious patriots, besides Marnix.  Even Olden-Barneveld, on taking office as Holland’s Advocate, at this period, made it a condition that his service was to last only until the reunion of the Provinces with Spain.

There was another illustrious personage in a foreign land who ever rendered homage to the character of the retired Netherland statesman.  Amid the desolation of France, Duplessis Mornay often solaced himself by distant communion with that kindred and sympathizing spirit.

“Plunged in public annoyances,” he wrote to Sainte Aldegonde, “I find no consolation, except in conference with the good, and among the good I hold you for one of the best.  With such men I had rather sigh profoundly than laugh heartily with others.  In particular, Sir, do me the honor to love me, and believe that I honor you singularly.  Impart to me something from your solitude, for I consider your deserts to be more fruitful and fertile than our most cultivated habitations.  As for me, think of me as of a man drowning in the anxieties of the time, but desirous, if possible, of swimming to solitude.”

Thus solitary, yet thus befriended,—­remote from public employment, yet ever employed, doing his daily work with all his soul and strength, Marnix passed the fifteen years yet remaining to him.  Death surprised him at last, at Leyden, in the year 1598, while steadily laboring upon his Flemish translation of the Old Testament, and upon the great political, theological, controversial, and satirical work on the differences of religion, which remains the most stately, though unfinished, monument of his literary genius.  At the age of sixty he went at last to the repose which he had denied to himself on earth.  “Repos ailleurs.”

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: 

Honor good patriots, and to support them in venial errors
Possible to do, only because we see that it has been done
Repose in the other world, “Repos ailleurs”
Soldiers enough to animate the good and terrify the bad
To work, ever to work, was the primary law of his nature
When persons of merit suffer without cause

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