King. This would be done with perfect ease if he would
only be willing to favour a little the one party, that of the
Contra-Remonstrants, and promise his Excellency "perfect and perpetual
authority in the government with other compensations."

The proposition, said du Agean, had been rejected by the privy
councillors with a declaration that they would not mix themselves up with
any factions, nor assist any party, but that they would gladly work with
the government for the accommodation of these difficulties and
differences in the Provinces.

"I send you all this nakedly," concluded Langerac, "exactly as it has
been communicated to me, having always answered according to my duty and
with a view by negotiating with these persons to discover the intentions
as well of one side as the other."

The Advocate was not profoundly impressed by these revelations. He was
too experienced a statesman to doubt that in times when civil and
religious passion was running high there was never lack of fishers in
troubled waters, and that if a body of conspirators could secure a
handsome compensation by selling their country to a foreign prince, they
would always be ready to do it.

But although believed by Maurice to be himself a stipendiary of Spain, he
was above suspecting the Prince of any share in the low and stupid
intrigue which du Agean had imagined or disclosed. That the Stadholder
was ambitious of greater power, he hardly doubted, but that he was
seeking to acquire it by such corrupt and circuitous means, he did not
dream. He confidentially communicated the plot as in duty bound to some
members of the States, and had the Prince been accused in any
conversation or statement of being privy to the scheme, he would have
thought himself bound to mention it to him. The story came to the ears of
Maurice however, and helped to feed his wrath against the Advocate, as if
he were responsible for a plot, if plot it were, which had been concocted
by his own deadliest enemies. The Prince wrote a letter alluding to this
communication of Langerac and giving much alarm to that functionary. He
thought his despatches must have been intercepted and proposed in future
to write always by special courier. Barneveld thought that unnecessary
except when there were more important matters than those appeared to him
to be and requiring more haste.

"The letter of his Excellency," said he to the Ambassador, "is caused in
my opinion by the fact that some