There was much murmuring in France when the appointment of a personage comparatively so humble to a position so important was known.  It was considered as a blow aimed directly at the malcontent princes of the blood, who were at that moment plotting their first levy of arms against the Queen.  Du Maurier had been ill-treated by the Due de Bouillon, who naturally therefore now denounced the man whom he had injured to the government to which he was accredited.  Being the agent of Mary de’ Medici, he was, of course, described as a tool of the court and a secret pensioner of Spain.  He was to plot with the arch traitor Barneveld as to the best means for distracting the Provinces and bringing them back into Spanish subjection.  Du Maurier, being especially but secretly charged to prevent the return of Francis Aerssens to Paris, incurred of course the enmity of that personage and of the French grandees who ostentatiously protected him.  It was even pretended by Jeannin that the appointment of a man so slightly known to the world, so inexperienced in diplomacy, and of a parentage so little distinguished, would be considered an affront by the States-General.

But on the whole, Villeroy had made an excellent choice.  No safer man could perhaps have been found in France for a post of such eminence, in circumstances so delicate, and at a crisis so grave.  The man who had been able to make himself agreeable and useful, while preserving his integrity, to characters so dissimilar as the refining, self-torturing, intellectual Duplessis-Mornay, the rude, aggressive, and straightforward Sully, the deep-revolving, restlessly plotting Bouillon, and the smooth, silent, and tortuous Villeroy—­men between whom there was no friendship, but, on the contrary, constant rancour—­had material in him to render valuable services at this particular epoch.  Everything depended on patience, tact, watchfulness in threading the distracting, almost inextricable, maze which had been created by personal rivalries, ambitions, and jealousies in the state he represented and the one to which he was accredited.  “I ascribe it all to God,” he said, in his testament to his children, “the impenetrable workman who in His goodness has enabled me to make myself all my life obsequious, respectful, and serviceable to all, avoiding as much as possible, in contenting some, not to discontent others.”  He recommended his children accordingly to endeavour “to succeed in life by making themselves as humble, intelligent, and capable as possible.”

This is certainly not a very high type of character, but a safer one for business than that of the arch intriguer Francis Aerssens.  And he had arrived at the Hague under trying circumstances.  Unknown to the foreign world he was now entering, save through the disparaging rumours concerning him, sent thither in advance by the powerful personages arrayed against his government, he might have sunk under such a storm at the outset, but for the incomparable kindness and friendly aid of the Princess-Dowager, Louise de Coligny.  “I had need of her protection and recommendation as much as of life,” said du Maurier; “and she gave them in such excess as to annihilate an infinity of calumnies which envy had excited against me on every side.”  He had also a most difficult and delicate matter to arrange at the very moment of his arrival.