Van der Myle had gone to Paris to make such exertions as he could among the leading members of the council in favour of his father-in-law.  Langerac, the States’ ambassador there, who but yesterday had been turning at every moment to the Advocate for light and warmth as to the sun, now hastened to disavow all respect or regard for him.  He scoffed at the slender sympathy van der Myle was finding in the bleak political atmosphere.  He had done his best to find out what he had been negotiating with the members of the council and was glad to say that it was so inconsiderable as to be not worth reporting.  He had not spoken with or seen the King.  Jeannin, his own and his father-in-law’s principal and most confidential friend, had only spoken with him half an hour and then departed for Burgundy, although promising to confer with him sympathetically on his return.  “I am very displeased at his coming here,” said Langerac, “. . . . but he has found little friendship or confidence, and is full of woe and apprehension.”

The Ambassador’s labours were now confined to personally soliciting the King’s permission for deputations from the Reformed churches of France to go to the Synod, now opened (13th November) at Dordtrecht, and to clearing his own skirts with the Prince and States-General of any suspicion of sympathy with Barneveld.

In the first object he was unsuccessful, the King telling him at last “with clear and significant words that this was impossible, on account of his conscience, his respect for the Catholic religion, and many other reasons.”

In regard to the second point he acted with great promptness.

He received a summons in January 1619 from the States-General and the Prince to send them all letters that he had ever received from Barneveld.  He crawled at once to Maurice on his knees, with the letters in his hand.

“Most illustrious, high-born Prince, most gracious Lord,” he said; “obeying the commands which it has pleased the States and your princely Grace to give me, I send back the letters of Advocate Barneveld.  If your princely Grace should find anything in them showing that the said Advocate had any confidence in me, I most humbly beg your princely Grace to believe that I never entertained any affection for, him, except only in respect to and so far as he was in credit and good authority with the government, and according to the upright zeal which I thought I could see in him for the service of My high and puissant Lords the States-General and of your princely Grace.”

Greater humbleness could be expected of no ambassador.  Most nobly did the devoted friend and pupil of the great statesman remember his duty to the illustrious Prince and their High Mightinesses.  Most promptly did he abjure his patron now that he had fallen into the abyss.

“Nor will it be found,” he continued, “that I have had any sympathy or communication with the said Advocate except alone in things concerning my service.  The great trust I had in him as the foremost and oldest counsellor of the state, as the one who so confidentially instructed me on my departure for France, and who had obtained for himself so great authority that all the most important affairs of the country were entrusted to him, was the cause that I simply and sincerely wrote to him all that people were in the habit of saying at this court.