After all, the Ambassador had not made a bad business of his embassy from his own point of view.  A stranger in the Republic, for his father the Greffier was a refugee from Brabant, he had achieved through his own industry and remarkable talents, sustained by the favour of Barneveld—­ to whom he owed all his diplomatic appointments—­an eminent position in Europe.  Secretary to the legation to France in 1594, he had been successively advanced to the post of resident agent, and when the Republic had been acknowledged by the great powers, to that of ambassador.  The highest possible functions that representatives of emperors and kings could enjoy had been formally recognized in the person of the minister of a new-born republic.  And this was at a moment when, with exception of the brave but insignificant cantons of Switzerland, the Republic had long been an obsolete idea.

In a pecuniary point of view, too, he had not fared badly during his twenty years of diplomatic office.  He had made much money in various ways.  The King not long before his death sent him one day 20,000 florins as a present, with a promise soon to do much more for him.

Having been placed in so eminent a post, he considered it as due to himself to derive all possible advantage from it.  “Those who serve at the altar,” he said a little while after his return, “must learn to live by it.  I served their High Mightinesses at the court of a great king, and his Majesty’s liberal and gracious favours were showered upon me.  My upright conscience and steady obsequiousness greatly aided me.  I did not look upon opportunity with folded arms, but seized it and made my profit by it.  Had I not met with such fortunate accidents, my office would not have given me dry bread.”

Nothing could exceed the frankness and indeed the cynicism with which the Ambassador avowed his practice of converting his high and sacred office into merchandise.  And these statements of his should be scanned closely, because at this very moment a cry was distantly rising, which at a later day was to swell into a roar, that the great Advocate had been bribed and pensioned.  Nothing had occurred to justify such charges, save that at the period of the truce he had accepted from the King of France a fee of 20,000 florins for extra official and legal services rendered him a dozen years before, and had permitted his younger son to hold the office of gentleman-in-waiting at the French court with the usual salary attached to it.  The post, certainly not dishonourable in itself, had been intended by the King as a kindly compliment to the leading statesman of his great and good ally the Republic.  It would be difficult to say why such a favour conferred on the young man should be held more discreditable to the receiver than the Order of the Garter recently bestowed upon the great soldier of the Republic by another friendly sovereign.  It is instructive however to note the language in which Francis Aerssens spoke of favours and money bestowed by a foreign monarch upon himself, for Aerssens had come back from his embassy full of gall and bitterness against Barneveld.  Thenceforth he was to be his evil demon.