to be falsified soon afterwards.  The Emperor of Germany had gone mad; Prince Maurice had been assassinated in the Hague, a fact which his correspondents, the States-General, might be supposed already to know, if it were one; there had been a revolution in the royal bed-chamber; the Spanish cook of the young queen had arrived from Madrid; the Duke of Nevers was behaving very oddly at Vienna; such communications, and others equally startling, were the staple of his correspondence.

Still he was honest enough, very mild, perfectly docile to Barneveld, dependent upon his guidance, and fervently attached to that statesman so long as his wheel was going up the hill.  Moreover, his industry in obtaining information and his passion for imparting it made it probable that nothing very momentous would be neglected should it be laid before him, but that his masters, and especially the Advocate, would be enabled to judge for themselves as to the attention due to it.

“With this you will be apprised of some very high and weighty matters,” he wrote privately and in cipher to Barneveld, “which you will make use of according to your great wisdom and forethought for the country’s service.”

He requested that the matter might also be confided to M. van der Myle, that he might assist his father-in-law, so overburdened with business, in the task of deciphering the communication.  He then stated that he had been “very earnestly informed three days before by M. du Agean”—­member of the privy council of France—­“that it had recently come to the King’s ears, and his Majesty knew it to be authentic, that there was a secret and very dangerous conspiracy in Holland of persons belonging to the Reformed religion in which others were also mixed.  This party held very earnest and very secret correspondence with the factious portion of the Contra-Remonstrants both in the Netherlands and France, seeking under pretext of the religious dissensions or by means of them to confer the sovereignty upon Prince Maurice by general consent of the Contra-Remonstrants.  Their object was also to strengthen and augment the force of the same religious party in France, to which end the Duc de Bouillon and M. de Chatillon were very earnestly co-operating.  Langerac had already been informed by Chatillon that the Contra-Remonstrants had determined to make a public declaration against the Remonstrants, and come to an open separation from them.

“Others propose however,” said the Ambassador, “that the King himself should use the occasion to seize the sovereignty of the United Provinces for himself and to appoint Prince Maurice viceroy, giving him in marriage Madame Henriette of France.”  The object of this movement would be to frustrate the plots of the Contra-Remonstrants, who were known to be passionately hostile to the King and to France, and who had been constantly traversing the negotiations of M. du Maurier.  There was a disposition to send a special and solemn embassy to the States, but