Courtiers and politicians in plenty at the French court, now that Henry was dead, were quite sure that they had heard him say over and over again that the Netherlands had bound themselves to pay the Third.  They persuaded Mary de’ Medici that she likewise had often heard him say so, and induced her to take high ground on the subject in her interviews with Aerssens.  The luckless queen, who was always in want of money to satisfy the insatiable greed of her favourites, and to buy off the enmity of the great princes, was very vehement—­although she knew as much of those transactions as of the finances of Prester John or the Lama of Thibet —­in maintaining this claim of her government upon the States.

“After talking with the ministers,” said Aerssens, “I had an interview with the Queen.  I knew that she had been taught her lesson, to insist on the payment of the Third.  So I did not speak at all of the matter, but talked exclusively and at length of the French regiments in the States’ service.  She was embarrassed, and did not know exactly what to say.  At last, without replying a single word to what I had been saying, she became very red in the face, and asked me if I were not instructed to speak of the money due to England.  Whereupon I spoke in the sense already indicated.  She interrupted me by saying she had a perfect recollection that the late king intended and understood that we were to pay the Third to England, and had talked with her very seriously on the subject.  If he were living, he would think it very strange, she said, that we refused; and so on.

“Soissons, too, pretends to remember perfectly that such were the King’s intentions.  ’Tis a very strange thing, Sir.  Every one knows now the secrets of the late king, if you are willing to listen.  Yet he was not in the habit of taking all the world into his confidence.  The Queen takes her opinions as they give them to her.  ’Tis a very good princess, but I am sorry she is so ignorant of affairs.  As she says she remembers, one is obliged to say one believes her.  But I, who knew the King so intimately, and saw him so constantly, know that he could only have said that the Third was paid in acquittal of his debts to and for account of the King of England, and not that we were to make restitution thereof.  The Chancellor tells me my refusal has been taken as an affront by the Queen, and Puysieux says it is a contempt which she can’t swallow.”

Aerssens on his part remained firm; his pertinacity being the greater as he thoroughly understood the subject which he was talking about, an advantage which was rarely shared in by those with whom he conversed.  The Queen, highly scandalized by his demeanour, became from that time forth his bitter enemy, and, as already stated, was resolved to be rid of him.