For out of the cauldron where the miscellaneous elements of universal war were bubbling rose perpetually the fantastic image of Margaret Montmorency:  the fatal beauty at whose caprice the heroic sword of Ivry and Cahors was now uplifted and now sheathed.

Aerssens was baffled, and reported the humours of the court where he resided as changing from hour to hour.  To the last he reported that all the mighty preparations then nearly completed “might evaporate in smoke” if the Princess of Conde should come back.  Every ambassador in Paris was baffled.  Peter Pecquius was as much in the dark as Don Inigo de Cardenas, as Ubaldini or Edmonds.  No one save Sully, Aerssens, Barneveld, and the King knew the extensive arrangements and profound combinations which had been made for the war.  Yet not Sully, Aerssens, Barneveld, or the King, knew whether or not the war would really be made.

Barneveld had to deal with this perplexing question day by day.  His correspondence with his ambassador at Henry’s court was enormous, and we have seen that the Ambassador was with the King almost daily; sleeping or waking; at dinner or the chase; in the cabinet or the courtyard.

But the Advocate was also obliged to carry in his arms, as it were, the brood of snarling, bickering, cross-grained German princes, to supply them with money, with arms, with counsel, with brains; to keep them awake when they went to sleep, to steady them in their track, to teach them to go alone.  He had the congress at Hall in Suabia to supervise and direct; he had to see that the ambassadors of the new republic, upon which they in reality were already half dependent and chafing at their dependence, were treated with the consideration due to the proud position which the Commonwealth had gained.  Questions of etiquette were at that moment questions of vitality.  He instructed his ambassadors to leave the congress on the spot if they were ranked after the envoys of princes who were only feudatories of the Emperor.  The Dutch ambassadors, “recognising and relying upon no superiors but God and their sword,” placed themselves according to seniority with the representatives of proudest kings.

He had to extemporize a system of free international communication with all the powers of the earth—­with the Turk at Constantinople, with the Czar of Muscovy; with the potentates of the Baltic, with both the Indies.  The routine of a long established and well organized foreign office in a time-honoured state running in grooves; with well-balanced springs and well oiled wheels, may be a luxury of civilization; but it was a more arduous task to transact the greatest affairs of a state springing suddenly into recognized existence and mainly dependent for its primary construction and practical working on the hand of one man.