Thus the prisoners had disappeared from human sight, and their enemies ran riot in slandering them.  Yet thus far no public charges had been made.

“Nothing appears against them,” said du Maurier, “and people are beginning to open their mouths with incredible freedom.  While waiting for the condemnation of the prisoners, one is determined to dishonour them.”

The French ambassadors were instructed to intercede to the last, but they were steadily repulsed—­while the King of Great Britain, anxious to gain favour with Spain by aiding in the ruin of one whom he knew and Spain knew to be her determined foe, did all he could through his ambassador to frustrate their efforts and bring on a catastrophe.  The States-General and Maurice were now on as confidential terms with Carleton as they were cold and repellent to Boississe and du Maurier.

“To recall to them the benefits of the King,” said du Maurier, “is to beat the air.  And then Aerssens bewitches them, and they imagine that after having played runaway horses his Majesty will be only too happy to receive them back, caress them, and, in order to have their friendship, approve everything they have been doing right or wrong.”

Aerssens had it all his own way, and the States-General had just paid him 12,000 francs in cash on the ground that Langerac’s salary was larger than his had been when at the head of the same embassy many years before.

His elevation into the body of nobles, which Maurice had just stocked with five other of his partisans, was accounted an additional affront to France, while on the other hand the Queen-Mother, having through Epernon’s assistance made her escape from Blois, where she had been kept in durance since the death of Concini, now enumerated among other grievances for which she was willing to take up arms against her son that the King’s government had favoured Barneveld.

It was strange that all the devotees of Spain—­Mary de’ Medici, and Epernon, as well as James I. and his courtiers—­should be thus embittered against the man who had sold the Netherlands to Spain.

At last the Prince told the French ambassadors that the “people of the Provinces considered their persistent intercessions an invasion of their sovereignty.”  Few would have anything to say to them.  “No one listens to us, no one replies to us,” said du Maurier, “everyone visiting us is observed, and it is conceived a reproach here to speak to the ambassadors of France.”

Certainly the days were changed since Henry iv. leaned on the arm of Barneveld, and consulted with him, and with him only, among all the statesmen of Europe on his great schemes for regenerating Christendom and averting that general war which, now that the great king had been murdered and the Advocate imprisoned, had already begun to ravage Europe.