“I doubt not,” he wrote to Jacques de Maldere, the distinguished diplomatist and senator, who had recently returned from his embassy to England, “that this beautiful proposition of de Russy has been sent to your Province of Zealand.  Does it not seem to you a plot well woven as well in Holland as at this court to remove me from my post with disreputation?  What have I done that should cause the Queen to disapprove my proceedings?  Since the death of the late king I have always opposed the Third, which they have been trying to fix upon the treasury, on the ground that Henry never spoke to me of restitution, that the receipts given were simple ones, and that the money given was spent for the common benefit of France and the States under direction of the King’s government.  But I am expected here to obey M. de Villeroy, who says that it was the intention of the late king to oblige us to make the payment.  I am not accustomed to obey authority if it be not supported by reason.  It is for my masters to reply and to defend me.  The Queen has no reason to complain.  I have maintained the interests of my superiors.  But this is not the cause of the complaints.  My misfortune is that all my despatches have been sent from Holland in copy to this court.  Most of them contained free pictures of the condition and dealings of those who govern here.  M. de Villeroy has found himself depicted often, and now under pretext of a public negotiation he has found an opportunity of revenging himself. . . .  Besides this cause which Villeroy has found for combing my head, Russy has given notice here that I have kept my masters in the hopes of being honourably exempted from the claims of this government.  The long letter which I wrote to M. de Barneveld justifies my proceedings.”

It is no wonder that the Ambassador was galled to the quick by the outrage which those concerned in the government were seeking to put upon him.  How could an honest man fail to be overwhelmed with rage and anguish at being dishonoured before the world by his masters for scrupulously doing his duty, and for maintaining the rights and dignity of his own country?  He knew that the charges were but pretexts, that the motives of his enemies were as base as the intrigues themselves, but he also knew that the world usually sides with the government against the individual, and that a man’s reputation is rarely strong enough to maintain itself unsullied in a foreign land when his own government stretches forth its hand not to, shield, but to stab him.

   [See the similarity of Aerssens position to that of Motley 250 years
   later, in the biographical sketch of Motley by Oliver Wendell
   Holmes.  D.W.]

“I know,” he said, “that this plot has been woven partly in Holland and partly here by good correspondence, in order to drive me from my post with disreputation.  To this has tended the communication of my despatches to make me lose my best friends.  This too was the object of the particular imparting to de Russy of all my propositions, in order to draw a complaint against me from this court.