he had
commanded them to do the very contrary to that which they did."

The conference ended with a suggestion by Cecil, that as France would
only undertake a war in conjunction with England, and as England would
only consent to this if paid by France and the States, the best thing for
the two kings to do would be to do nothing, but to continue to live in
friendship together, without troubling themselves about foreign
complications.

This was the purpose towards which the English counsellors had been
steadily tending, and these last words of Cecil seemed to the ambassador
the only sincere ones spoken by him in the whole conference.

"If I kept silence," said the ambassador, "it was not because I
acquiesced in their reasoning. On the contrary, the manner in which they
had just revealed themselves, and avowed themselves in a certain sort
liars and impostors, had given me the most profound contempt for them. I
thought, however, that by heating myself and contending with them so far
from causing them to abandon a resolution which they had taken in
concert--I might even bring about a total rupture. On the other hand,
matters remaining as they were, and a friendship existing between the two
kings, which might perhaps be cemented by a double marriage, a more
favourable occasion might present itself for negotiation. I did not yet
despair of the success of my mission, because I believed that the king
had no part in the designs which his counsellors wished to carry out."

That the counsellors, then struggling for dominion over the new king and
his kingdom, understood the character of their sovereign better than did
the ambassador, future events were likely enough to prove. That they
preferred peace to war, and the friendship of Spain to an alliance,
offensive and defensive, with France in favour of a republic which they
detested, is certain. It is difficult, however, to understand why they
were "liars and impostors" because, in a conference with the
representative of France, they endeavoured to make their own opinions of
public policy valid rather than content themselves simply with being the
errand-bearers of the new king, whom they believed incapable of being
stirred to an honourable action.

The whole political atmosphere of Europe was mephitic with falsehood, and
certainly the gales which blew from the English court at the accession of
James were not fragrant, but De Rosny had himself come over from France
under false p