It would have been very difficult to extract much information or much comfort from this wily epistle.  The menace was sufficiently plain, the promise disagreeably vague.  Moreover, a letter from the same Catherine de Medici, had been recently found in a casket at the Duke’s lodgings in Antwerp.  In that communication, she had distinctly advised her son to re-establish the Roman Catholic religion, assuring him that by so doing, he would be enabled to marry the Infanta of Spain.  Nevertheless, the Prince, convinced that it was his duty to bridge over the deep and fatal chasm which had opened between the French Prince and the provinces, if an honorable reconciliation were possible, did not attach an undue importance either to the stimulating or to the upbraiding portion of the communication from Catherine.  He was most anxious to avert the chaos which he saw returning.  He knew that while the tempers of Rudolph, of the English Queen, and of the Protestant princes of Germany, and the internal condition of the Netherlands remained the same, it were madness to provoke the government of France, and thus gain an additional enemy, while losing their only friend.  He did not renounce the hope of forming all the Netherlands—­excepting of course the Walloon provinces already reconciled to Philip—­into one independent commonwealth, freed for ever from Spanish tyranny.  A dynasty from a foreign house he was willing to accept, but only on condition that the new royal line should become naturalized in the Netherlands, should, conform itself to the strict constitutional compact established, and should employ only natives in the administration of Netherland affairs.  Notwithstanding, therefore, the recent treachery of Anjou, he was willing to treat with him upon the ancient basis.  The dilemma was a very desperate one, for whatever might be his course, it was impossible that it should escape censure.  Even at this day, it is difficult to decide what might have been the result of openly braving the French government, and expelling Anjou.  The Prince of Parma—­subtle, vigilant, prompt with word and blow—­was waiting most anxiously to take advantage of every false step of his adversary.  The provinces had been already summoned in most eloquent language, to take warning by the recent fate of Antwerp, and to learn by the manifestation just made by Anjou, of his real intentions; that their only salvation lay in a return to the King’s arms.  Anjou himself, as devoid of shame as of honor, was secretly holding interviews with Parma’s agents, Acosta and Flaminio Carnero, at the very moment when he was alternately expressing to the states his resentment that they dared to doubt his truth, or magnanimously extending to them his pardon for their suspicions.  He was writing letters full of injured innocence to Orange and to the states, while secretly cavilling over the terms of the treaty by which he was to sell himself to Spain.  Scruples as to enacting so base a part did not trouble the “Son of France.”