od but to him was more than
indifferent.

Maurice was captain-general and admiral-general of five provinces. He
appointed to governments and to all military office. He had a share of
appointment to the magistracies. He had the same advantages and the same
authority as had been enjoyed in the Netherlands by the ancient sovereign
counts, by the dukes of Burgundy, by Emperor Charles V. himself.

Every one now was in favour of increasing his pensions, his salaries, his
material splendour. Should he succeed in seizing the sovereignty, men
would envy him even to the ribbands of his pages' and his lackeys' shoes.
He turned to the annals of Holland and showed the Princess that there had
hardly been a sovereign count against whom his subjects had not revolted,
marching generally into the very courtyard of the palace at the Hague in
order to take his life.

Convinced by this reasoning, Louise de Coligny had at once changed her
mind, and subsequently besought her stepson to give up a project sure to
be fatal to his welfare, his peace of mind, and the good of the country.
Maurice listened to her coldly, gave little heed to the Advocate's logic,
and hated him in his heart from that day forth.

The Princess remained loyal to Barneveld to the last.

Thus the foundation was laid of that terrible enmity which, inflamed by
theological passion, was to convert the period of peace into a hell, to
rend the Provinces asunder when they had most need of repose, and to lead
to tragical results for ever to be deplored. Already in 1607 Francis
Aerssens had said that the two had become so embroiled and things had
gone so far that one or the other would have to leave the country. He
permitted also the ridiculous statement to be made in his house at Paris,
that Henry IV. believed the Advocate to have become Spanish, and had
declared that Prince Maurice would do well to have him put into a sack
and thrown into the sea.

His life had been regularly divided into two halves, the campaigning
season and the period of winter quarters. In the one his business, and
his talk was of camps, marches, sieges, and battles only. In the other he
was devoted to his stud, to tennis, to mathematical and mechanical
inventions, and to chess, of which he was passionately fond, and which he
did not play at all well. A Gascon captain serving in the States' army
was his habitual antagonist in that game, and, although the stakes were
but a crown a game, derived a steady