Time was soon to show whether it was safe to injure him.  Barneveld, from well-considered motives of public policy, was favouring his honourable recall.  But he allowed a decorous interval of more than three years to elapse in which to terminate his affairs, and to take a deliberate departure from that French embassy to which the Advocate had originally promoted him, and in which there had been so many years of mutual benefit and confidence between the two statesmen.  He used no underhand means.  He did not abuse the power of the States-General which he wielded to cast him suddenly and brutally from the distinguished post which he occupied, and so to attempt to dishonour him before the world.  Nothing could be more respectful and conciliatory than the attitude of the government from first to last towards this distinguished functionary.  The Republic respected itself too much to deal with honourable agents whose services it felt obliged to dispense with as with vulgar malefactors who had been detected in crime.  But Aerssens believed that it was the Advocate who had caused copies of his despatches to be sent to the French court, and that he had deliberately and for a fixed purpose been undermining his influence at home and abroad and blackening his character.  All his ancient feelings of devotion, if they had ever genuinely existed towards his former friend and patron, turned to gall.  He was almost ready to deny that he had ever respected Barneveld, appreciated his public services, admired his intellect, or felt gratitude for his guidance.

A fierce controversy—­to which at a later period it will be necessary to call the reader’s attention, because it is intimately connected with dark scenes afterwards to be enacted—­took place between the late ambassador and Cornelis van der Myle.  Meantime Barneveld pursued the policy which he had marked out for the States-General in regard to France.

Certainly it was a difficult problem.  There could be no doubt that metamorphosed France could only be a dangerous ally for the Republic.  It was in reality impossible that she should be her ally at all.  And this Barneveld knew.  Still it was better, so he thought, for the Netherlands that France should exist than that it should fall into utter decomposition.  France, though under the influence of Spain, and doubly allied by marriage contracts to Spain, was better than Spain itself in the place of France.  This seemed to be the only choice between two evils.  Should the whole weight of the States-General be thrown into the scale of the malcontent and mutinous princes against the established but tottering government of France, it was difficult to say how soon Spain might literally, as well as inferentially, reign in Paris.

Between the rebellion and the legitimate government, therefore, Barneveld did not hesitate.  France, corporate France, with which the Republic had bean so long in close and mutually advantageous alliance, and from whose late monarch she had received such constant and valuable benefits, was in the Advocate’s opinion the only power to be recognised, Papal and Spanish though it was.  The advantage of an alliance with the fickle, self-seeking, and ever changing mutiny, that was seeking to make use of Protestantism to effect its own ends, was in his eyes rather specious than real.