a firm bulwark against Spanish ambition.  Our constancy and patience ought to be strengthened by counsel and by deed in order that we may exist; a Christian sympathy and a small assistance not being sufficient.  Believe and cause to be believed that the present condition of our affairs requires more aid in counsel and money than ever before, and that nothing could be better bestowed than to further this end.

“Messieurs Jeannin, Buzenval, and de Russy have been all here these twelve days.  We have firm hopes that other kings, princes, and republics will not stay upon formalities, but will also visit the patients here in order to administer sovereign remedies.

“Lend no ear to any flying reports.  We say with the wise men over there, ‘Metuo Danaos et dons ferentes.’  We know our antagonists well, and trust their hearts no more than before, ‘sed ultra posse non est esse.’  To accept more burthens than we can pay for will breed military mutiny; to tax the community above its strength will cause popular tumults, especially in ‘rebus adversis,’ of which the beginnings were seen last year, and without a powerful army the enemy is not to be withstood.  I have received your letters to the 17th May.  My advice is to trust to his upright proceedings and with patience to overcome all things.  Thus shall the detractors and calumniators best be confounded.  Assure his Majesty and his ministers that I will do my utmost to avert our ruin and his Majesty’s disservice.”

The treaty was made, and from that time forth the antagonism between the eminent statesman and the great military chieftain became inevitable.  The importance of the one seemed likely to increase day by day.  The occupation of the other for a time was over.

During the war Maurice had been, with exception of Henry IV., the most considerable personage in Europe.  He was surrounded with that visible atmosphere of power the poison of which it is so difficult to resist, and through the golden haze of which a mortal seems to dilate for the vulgar eye into the supernatural.  The attention of Christendom was perpetually fixed upon him.  Nothing like his sieges, his encampments, his military discipline, his scientific campaigning had been seen before in modern Europe.  The youthful aristocracy from all countries thronged to his camp to learn the game of war, for he had restored by diligent study of the ancients much that was noble in that pursuit, and had elevated into an art that which had long since degenerated into a system of butchery, marauding, and rapine.  And he had fought with signal success and unquestionable heroism the most important and most brilliant pitched battle of the age.  He was a central figure of the current history of Europe.  Pagan nations looked up to him as one of the leading sovereigns of Christendom.  The Emperor of Japan addressed him as his brother monarch, assured him that his subjects trading to that distant empire should be welcomed and protected, and expressed himself ashamed that so great a prince, whose name and fame had spread through the world, should send his subjects to visit a country so distant and unknown, and offer its emperor a friendship which he was unconscious of deserving.