ld hardly fail to, be sincere. He began seriously to, hope that
his negotiations would be successful, and was for soaring at once into
the regions of high politics, when the king suddenly began to talk of
hunting.

"And so you sent half the stag I sent you; to Count Arenberg," said
James; "but he is very angry about it; thinking that you did so to show
how much more I make of you than I do of him. And so I do; for I know the
difference between your king, my brother; and his masters who have sent
me an ambassador who can neither walk nor talk, and who asked me to give
him audience in a garden because he cannot go upstairs."

The king then alluded to Tassis, chief courier of his Catholic Majesty
and special envoy from Spain, asking whether the marquis had seen him on
his passage through France.

"Spain sends me a postillion-ambassador," said he, "that he may travel
the faster and attend to business by post."

It was obvious that James took a sincere satisfaction in abusing
everything relating to that country from its sovereign and the Duke of
Lerma downwards; but he knew very well that Velasco, constable of
Castile, had been already designated as ambassador, and would soon be on
his way to England.

De Rosny on the termination of his audience, was escorted in great state
by the Earl of Northumberland to the barges.

A few days later, the ambassador had another private audience, in which
the king expressed himself with apparent candour concerning the balance
of power.

Christendom, in his opinion, should belong in three equal shares to the
families of Stuart, Bourbon, and Habsburg; but personal ambition and the
force of events had given to the house of Austria more than its fair
third. Sound policy therefore required a combination between France and
England, in order to reduce their copartner within proper limits. This
was satisfactory as far as it went, and the ambassador complimented the
king on his wide views of policy and his lofty sentiments in regard to
human rights.

Warming with the subject, James held language very similar to that which
De Rosny and his master had used in their secret conferences, and took
the ground unequivocally that the secret war levied by Spain against
France and England, as exemplified in the Biron conspiracy, the assault
on Geneva, the aid of the Duke of Savoy, and in the perpetual fostering
of Jesuit intrigues, plots of assassination, and other conspiracies in
the British islands