“Man proposes, gentlemen,” said he “but God disposes.  We are frequently called on to observe that things have a great variety of times and terms.  Many a man is refused by a woman twice, who succeeds the third time,” and so on, with which wholesome apothegms Des Pruneaux faded away then and for ever from the page of Netherland history.

In a few days afterwards the envoys took shipping at Dieppe, and arrived early in April at the Hague.

And thus terminated the negotiation of the States with France.

It had been a scene of elaborate trifling on the King’s part from beginning to end.  Yet the few grains of wheat which have thus been extracted from the mountains of diplomatic chaff so long mouldering in national storehouses, contain, however dry and tasteless, still something for human nourishment.  It is something to comprehend the ineffable meanness of the hands which then could hold the destiny of mighty empires.  Here had been offered a magnificent prize to France; a great extent of frontier in the quarter where expansion was most desirable, a protective network of towns and fortresses on the side most vulnerable, flourishing, cities on the sea-coast where the marine traffic was most lucrative, the sovereignty of a large population, the most bustling, enterprising, and hardy in Europe—­a nation destined in a few short years to become the first naval and commercial power in the world—­all this was laid at the feet of Henry Valois and Catharine de’ Medici, and rejected.

The envoys, with their predecessors, had wasted eight months of most precious time; they had heard and made orations, they had read and written protocols, they had witnessed banquets, masquerades, and revels of stupendous frivolity, in honour of the English Garter, brought solemnly to the Valois by Lord Derby, accompanied by one hundred gentlemen “marvellously, sumptuously, and richly accoutred,” during that dreadful winter when the inhabitants of Brussels, Antwerp, Mechlin—­to save which splendid cities and to annex them to France, was a main object of the solemn embassy from the Netherlands—­were eating rats, and cats, and dogs, and the weeds from the pavements, and the grass from the churchyards; and were finding themselves more closely pressed than ever by the relentless genius of Farnese; and in exchange for all these losses and all this humiliation, the ambassadors now returned to their constituents, bringing an account of Chiverny’s magnificent banquets and long orations, of the smiles of Henry iii., the tears of Catharine de’ Medici, the regrets of M. des Pruneaux, besides sixteen gold chains, each weighing twenty-one ounces and two grains.

It is worth while to go for a moment behind the scene; We have seen the actors, with mask and cothurn and tinsel crown, playing their well-conned parts upon the stage.  Let us hear them threaten, and whimper, and chaffer among themselves.

So soon as it was intimated that Henry iii. was about to grant the Netherland, envoys an audience, the wrath of ambassador Mendoza was kindled.  That magniloquent Spaniard instantly claimed an interview with the King, before whom, according to the statement of his colleagues, doing their best to pry into these secrets, he blustered and bounced, and was more fantastical in his insolence than even Spanish envoy had ever been before.