appointed ambassador to Venice, soon afterwards arrived in Paris, where
he made a very favourable impression, and was highly lauded by Aerssens
in his daily correspondence with Barneveld. No portentous shadow of
future and fatal discord between those statesmen fell upon the cheerful
scene. Before the year closed, he arrived at his post, and was received
with great distinction, despite the obstacles thrown in his way by Spain
and other powers; the ambassador of France itself, de Champigny, having
privately urged that he ought to be placed on the same footing with the
envoys of Savoy and of Florence.

Van der Myle at starting committed the trifling fault of styling the
States-General "most illustrious" (illustrissimi) instead of "most
serene," the title by which Venice designated herself.

The fault was at once remedied, however, Priuli the Doge seating the
Dutch ambassador on his right hand at his solemn reception, and giving
directions that van der Myle should be addressed as Excellency, his post
being assigned him directly after his seniors, the ambassadors of Pope,
Emperor, and kings. The same precedence was settled in Paris, while
Aerssens, who did not consider himself placed in a position of greater
usefulness by his formal installation as ambassador, received private
intimation from Henry, with whom he was on terms of great confidence and
intimacy, that he should have private access to the King as frequently
and as in formally as before. The theory that the ambassador,
representing the personality of his sovereign, may visit the monarch to
whom he is accredited, without ceremony and at his own convenience, was
as rarely carried into practice in the sixteenth century as in the
nineteenth, while on the other hand Aerssens, as the private and
confidential agent of a friendly but not publicly recognized
commonwealth, had been for many years in almost daily personal
communication with the King.

It is also important to note that the modern fallacy according to which
republics being impersonal should not be represented by ambassadors had
not appeared in that important epoch in diplomatic history. On the
contrary, the two great republics of the age, Holland and Venice,
vindicated for themselves, with as much dignity and reason as success,
their right to the highest diplomatic honours.

The distinction was substantial not shadowy; those haughty commonwealths
not considering it advantageous or decorous that their repres