They liked not such divine right nor such gentle-mindedness.  They recognised no duty on their part to consent to such a system.  Even the friendly King of Denmark sent a legation for a similar purpose, which was respectfully but very decidedly allowed to return as it came; but the most persistent in schemes of interference for the purpose of putting an end to the effusion of blood in the Netherlands was Sigismund of Poland.  This monarch, who occupied two very incompatible positions, being sovereign at once of fanatically Protestant Sweden and of orthodox Poland, and who was, moreover, son-in-law of Archduke Charles of Styria whose other daughter was soon to be espoused by the Prince of Spain—­was personally and geographically interested in liberating Philip from the inconvenience of his Netherland war.  Only thus could he hope to bring the Spanish power to the rescue of Christendom against the Turk.  Troubles enough were in store for Sigismund in his hereditary northern realms, and he was to learn that his intermarriage with the great Catholic and Imperial house did not enable him to trample out Protestantism in those hardy Scandinavian and Flemish regions where it had taken secure root.  Meantime he despatched, in solemn mission to the republic and to the heretic queen, a diplomatist whose name and whose oratorical efforts have by a caprice of history been allowed to endure to our times.

Paul Dialyn was solemnly received at the Hague on the 21st July.  A pragmatical fop, attired in a long, magnificent Polish robe, covered with diamonds and other jewels, he was yet recognised by some of those present as having been several years before a student at Leyden under a different name, and with far less gorgeous surroundings.  He took up his position in the council-chamber, in the presence of the stadholder and the leading members of the States-General, and pronounced a long Latin oration, in the manner, as it was said, of a monk delivering a sermon from the pulpit.  He kept his eyes steadily fixed on the ceiling, never once looking at the men whom he was addressing, and speaking in a loud, nasal, dictatorial tone, not at all agreeable to the audience.  He dwelt in terms of extravagant eulogy on the benignity and gentleness of the King of Spain—­qualities in which he asserted that no prince on earth could be compared to him—­and he said this to the very face of Maurice of Nassau.  That the benignant and gentle king had caused the stadholder’s father to be assassinated, and that he had rewarded the murderer’s family with a patent of nobility, and with an ample revenue taken from the murdered man’s property, appeared of no account to the envoy in the full sweep of his rhetoric.  Yet the reminiscence caused a shudder of disgust in all who heard him.