r to earn in
future battle-fields, a higher position before the world to be won. He
had a right by birth, by personal and family service, to claim admittance
among the monarchs of Europe. The pistol of Balthasar Gerard had alone
prevented the elevation of his father to the sovereignty of the
provinces. The patents, wanting only a few formalities, were still in
possession of the son. As the war went on--and nothing but blind belief
in Spanish treachery could cause the acceptance of a peace which would be
found to mean slavery--there was no height to which he might not climb.
With the return of peace and submission, his occupation would be gone,
obscurity and poverty the sole recompense for his life long services and
the sacrifices of his family. The memory of the secret movements twice
made but a few years before to elevate him to the sovereignty, and which
he believed to have been baffled by the Advocate, doubtless rankled in
his breast. He did not forget that when the subject had been discussed by
the favourers of the scheme in Barneveld's own house, Barneveld himself
had prophesied that one day or another "the rights would burst out which
his Excellency had to become prince of the provinces, on strength of the
signed and sealed documents addressed to the late Prince of Orange; that
he had further alluded to the efforts then on foot to make him Duke of
Gelderland; adding with a sneer, that Zeeland was all agog on the
subject, while in that province there were individuals very desirous of
becoming children of Zebedee."

Barneveld, on his part, although accustomed to speak in public of his
Excellency Prince Maurice in terms of profoundest respect, did not fail
to communicate in influential quarters his fears that the prince was
inspired by excessive ambition, and that he desired to protract the war,
not for the good of the commonwealth, but for the attainment of greater
power in the state. The envoys of France, expressly instructed on that
subject by the king, whose purposes would be frustrated if the ill-blood
between these eminent personages could not be healed, did their best to
bring about a better understanding, but with hardly more than an apparent
success.

Once more there were stories flying about that the stadholder had called
the Advocate liar, and that he had struck him or offered to strike
him--tales as void of truth, doubtless, as those so rife after the battle
of Nieuport, but which indicated the exasperat