of the King to Archduke Albert—­ Preparations for the Queen’s Coronation, and of Henry to open the Campaign in person—­Perplexities of Henry—­Forebodings and Warnings —­The Murder accomplished—­Terrible Change in France—­Triumph of Concini and of Spain—­Downfall of Sully—­Disputes of the Grandees among themselves—­Special Mission of Condelence from the Republic—­ Conference on the great Enterprise—­Departure of van der Myle from Paris.

There were reasons enough why the Advocate could not go to Paris at this juncture.  It was absurd in Henry to suppose it possible.  Everything rested on Barneveld’s shoulders.  During the year which had just passed he had drawn almost every paper, every instruction in regard to the peace negotiations, with his own hand, had assisted at every conference, guided and mastered the whole course of a most difficult and intricate negotiation, in which he had not only been obliged to make allowance for the humbled pride and baffled ambition of the ancient foe of the Netherlands, but to steer clear of the innumerable jealousies, susceptibilities, cavillings, and insolences of their patronizing friends.

It was his brain that worked, his tongue that spoke, his restless pen that never paused.  His was not one of those easy posts, not unknown in the modern administration of great affairs, where the subordinate furnishes the intellect, the industry, the experience, while the bland superior, gratifying the world with his sign-manual, appropriates the applause.  So long as he lived and worked, the States-General and the States of Holland were like a cunningly contrived machine, which seemed to be alive because one invisible but mighty mind vitalized the whole.

And there had been enough to do.  It was not until midsummer of 1609 that the ratifications of the Treaty of Truce, one of the great triumphs in the history of diplomacy, had been exchanged, and scarcely had this period been put to the eternal clang of arms when the death of a lunatic threw the world once more into confusion.  It was obvious to Barneveld that the issue of the Cleve-Julich affair, and of the tremendous religious fermentation in Bohemia, Moravia, and Austria, must sooner or later lead to an immense war.  It was inevitable that it would devolve upon the States to sustain their great though vacillating, their generous though encroaching, their sincere though most irritating, ally.  And yet, thoroughly as Barneveld had mastered all the complications and perplexities of the religious and political question, carefully as he had calculated the value of the opposing forces which were shaking Christendom, deeply as he had studied the characters of Matthias and Rudolph, of Charles of Denmark and Ferdinand of Graz, of Anhalt and Maximilian, of Brandenburg and Neuburg, of James and Philip, of Paul V. and Charles Emmanuel, of Sully and Yilleroy, of Salisbury and Bacon, of Lerma and Infantado; adroitly as he could measure, weigh, and analyse all these elements in the great problem which was forcing itself on the attention of Europe—­there was one factor with which it was difficult for this austere republican, this cold, unsusceptible statesman, to deal:  the intense and imperious passion of a greybeard for a woman of sixteen.