At that moment too the King was in a state of vehement wrath with the Spanish Netherlands on account of a stinging libel against himself, “an infamous and wonderfully scandalous pamphlet,” as he termed it, called ‘Corona Regis’, recently published at Louvain.  He had sent Sir John Bennet as special ambassador to the Archdukes to demand from them justice and condign and public chastisement on the author of the work—­a rector Putianus as he believed, successor of Justus Lipsius in his professorship at Louvain—­and upon the printer, one Flaminius.  Delays and excuses having followed instead of the punishment originally demanded, James had now instructed his special envoy in case of further delay or evasion to repudiate all further friendship or intercourse with the Archduke, to ratify the recall of his minister-resident Trumbull, and in effect to announce formal hostilities.

“The King takes the thing wonderfully to heart,” said Caron.

James in effect hated to be made ridiculous, and we shall have occasion to see how important a part other publications which he deemed detrimental to the divinity of his person were to play in these affairs.

Meantime it was characteristic of this sovereign that—­while ready to talk of war with Philip’s brother-in-law for a pamphlet, while seeking the hand of Philip’s daughter for his son—­he was determined at the very moment when the world was on fire to take himself, the heaven-born extinguisher of all political conflagrations, away from affairs and to seek the solace of along holiday in Scotland.  His counsellors persistently and vehemently implored him to defer that journey until the following year at least, all the neighbouring nations being now in a state of war and civil commotion.  But it was in vain.  He refused to listen to them for a moment, and started for Scotland before the middle of March.

Conde, who had kept France in a turmoil, had sought aid alternately from the Calvinists at Grenoble and the Jesuits in Rome, from Spain and from the Netherlands, from the Pope and from Maurice of Nassau, had thus been caged at last.  But there was little gained.  There was one troublesome but incompetent rebel the less, but there was no king in the land.  He who doubts the influence of the individual upon the fate of a country and upon his times through long passages of history may explain the difference between France of 1609, with a martial king aided by great statesmen at its head, with an exchequer overflowing with revenue hoarded for a great cause—­and that cause an attempt at least to pacificate Christendom and avert a universal and almost infinite conflict now already opening—­and the France of 1617, with its treasures already squandered among ignoble and ruffianly favourites, with every office in state, church, court, and magistracy sold to the highest bidder, with a queen governed by an Italian adventurer who was governed by Spain, and with a little king who had but lately expressed triumph at his confirmation because now he should no longer be whipped, and who was just married to a daughter of the hereditary and inevitable foe of France.