Exactly at this period the long-smothered resentment of Maurice against his old preceptor, counsellor, and, as he believed, betrayer, flamed forth anew.  He was indignant that a man, so infinitely beneath him in degree, should thus dare to cross his plans, to hazard, as he believed, the best interests of the state, and to interfere with the course of his legitimate ambition.  There was more glory for a great soldier to earn in future battle-fields, a higher position before the world to be won.  He had a right by birth, by personal and family service, to claim admittance among the monarchs of Europe.  The pistol of Balthasar Gerard had alone prevented the elevation of his father to the sovereignty of the provinces.  The patents, wanting only a few formalities, were still in possession of the son.  As the war went on—­and nothing but blind belief in Spanish treachery could cause the acceptance of a peace which would be found to mean slavery—­there was no height to which he might not climb.  With the return of peace and submission, his occupation would be gone, obscurity and poverty the sole recompense for his life long services and the sacrifices of his family.  The memory of the secret movements twice made but a few years before to elevate him to the sovereignty, and which he believed to have been baffled by the Advocate, doubtless rankled in his breast.  He did not forget that when the subject had been discussed by the favourers of the scheme in Barneveld’s own house, Barneveld himself had prophesied that one day or another “the rights would burst out which his Excellency had to become prince of the provinces, on strength of the signed and sealed documents addressed to the late Prince of Orange; that he had further alluded to the efforts then on foot to make him Duke of Gelderland; adding with a sneer, that Zeeland was all agog on the subject, while in that province there were individuals very desirous of becoming children of Zebedee.”

Barneveld, on his part, although accustomed to speak in public of his Excellency Prince Maurice in terms of profoundest respect, did not fail to communicate in influential quarters his fears that the prince was inspired by excessive ambition, and that he desired to protract the war, not for the good of the commonwealth, but for the attainment of greater power in the state.  The envoys of France, expressly instructed on that subject by the king, whose purposes would be frustrated if the ill-blood between these eminent personages could not be healed, did their best to bring about a better understanding, but with hardly more than an apparent success.

Once more there were stories flying about that the stadholder had called the Advocate liar, and that he had struck him or offered to strike him—­tales as void of truth, doubtless, as those so rife after the battle of Nieuport, but which indicated the exasperation which existed.

When the news of the rejection of the King’s ratification reached Madrid, the indignation of the royal conscience-keepers was vehement.