the disaster now hanging over Christianity.
Pecquius replied by smooth commonplaces in favour of peace with which
Villeroy warmly concurred; both sadly expressing the conviction however
that the wrath divine had descended on them all on account of their sins.

A few days later, however, the Secretary changed his tone.

"I will speak to you frankly and clearly," he said to Pecquius, "and tell
you as from myself that there is passion, and if one is willing to
arrange the affair of the Princess, everything else can be accommodated
and appeased. Put if the Princess remain where she is, we are on the eve
of a rupture which may set fire to the four corners of Christendom."
Pecquius said he liked to talk roundly, and was glad to find that he had
not been mistaken in his opinion, that all these commotions were only
made for the Princess, and if all the world was going to war, she would
be the principal subject of it. He could not marvel sufficiently, he
said, at this vehement passion which brought in its train so great and
horrible a conflagration; adding many arguments to show that it was no
fault of the Archdukes, but that he who was the cause of all might one
day have reason to repent.

Villeroy replied that "the King believed the Princess to be suffering and
miserable for love of him, and that therefore he felt obliged to have her
sent back to her father." Pecquius asked whether in his conscience the
Secretary of State believed it right or reasonable to make war for such a
cause. Villeroy replied by asking "whether even admitting the negative,
the Ambassador thought it were wisely done for such a trifle, for a
formality, to plunge into extremities and to turn all Christendom upside
down." Pecquius, not considering honour a trifle or a formality, said
that "for nothing in the world would his Highness the Archduke descend to
a cowardly action or to anything that would sully his honour." Villeroy
said that the Prince had compelled his wife, pistol in hand, to follow
him to the Netherlands, and that she was no longer bound to obey a
husband who forsook country and king. Her father demanded her, and she
said "she would rather be strangled than ever to return to the company of
her husband." The Archdukes were not justified in keeping her against her
will in perpetual banishment. He implored the Ambassador in most pathetic
terms to devise some means of sending back the Princess, saying that he
who should find such expedient woul