eath, but I hope that God
will not so much afflict us." Yet the calumniators of the day did not
scruple to circulate, nor the royalist chroniclers to perpetuate, the
most senseless and infamous fables on the subject of this nobleman's
death. He died of poison, they said, administered to him "in oysters," by
command of the Prince of Orange, who had likewise made a point of
standing over him on his death-bed, for the express purpose of sneering
at the Catholic ceremonies by which his dying agonies were solaced. Such
were the tales which grave historians have recorded concerning the death
of Maximilian of Bossu, who owed so much to the Prince. The command of
the states' army, a yearly pension of five thousand florins, granted at
the especial request of Orange but a few months before, and the profound
words of regret in the private letter jest cited, are a sufficient answer
to such slanders.

The personal courage and profound military science of Parma were
invaluable to the royal cause; but his subtle, unscrupulous, and
subterranean combinations of policy were even more fruitful at this
period. No man ever understood the art of bribery more thoroughly or
practised it more skillfully. He bought a politician, or a general, or a
grandee, or a regiment of infantry, usually at the cheapest price at
which those articles could be purchased, and always with the utmost
delicacy with which such traffic could be conducted. Men conveyed
themselves to government for a definite price--fixed accurately in
florins and groats, in places and pensions--while a decent gossamer of
conventional phraseology was ever allowed to float over the nakedness of
unblushing treason. Men high in station, illustrious by ancestry,
brilliant in valor, huckstered themselves, and swindled a confiding
country for as ignoble motives as ever led counterfeiters or bravoes to
the gallows, but they were dealt with in public as if actuated only by
the loftiest principles. Behind their ancient shields, ostentatiously
emblazoned with fidelity to church and king, they thrust forth their
itching palms with the mendicity which would be hardly credible, were it
not attested by the monuments more perennial than brass, of their own
letters and recorded conversations.

Already, before the accession of Parma to power, the true way to dissever
the provinces had been indicated by the famous treason of the Seigneur de
la Motte. This nobleman commanded a regiment in the service of