r there
again so long as the Spanish commissioners remained in the country. The
door was opened wide, and it was plain that those functionaries must take
their departure. Pride would not allow them to ask permission of the
States to remain, although they intimated to the ambassadors their
intense desire to linger for ten or twelve days longer. This was
obviously inadmissible, and on the 30th September they appeared before
the Assembly to take leave.

There were but three of them, the Genoese, the Spaniard, and the
Burgundian--Spinola, Mancicidor; and Richardot. Of the two Netherlanders,
brother John was still in Spain, and Verreyken found it convenient that
day to have a lame leg.

President Richardot, standing majestically before the States-General,
with his robes wrapped around his tall, spare form, made a solemn
farewell speech of mingled sorrow, pity, and the resentment of injured
innocence. They had come to the Hague, he said, sent by the King of Spain
and the archdukes to treat for a good and substantial peace, according to
the honest intention of his Majesty and their Highnesses. To this end
they had sincerely and faithfully dealt with the gentlemen deputed for
that purpose by their High Mightinesses the States, doing everything they
could think of to further the cause of peace. They lamented that the
issue had not been such as they had hoped, notwithstanding that the king
and archdukes had so far derogated from their reputation as to send their
commissioners into the United Netherlands, it having been easy enough to
arrange for negotiations on other soil. It had been their wish thus to
prove to the world how straightforward were their intentions by not
requiring the States to send deputies to them. They had accorded the
first point in the negotiations, touching the free state of the country.
Their High Mightinesses had taken offence upon the second, regarding the
restoration of religion in the United Provinces. Thereupon the father
commissary had gone to Spain, and had remained longer than was agreeable.
Nevertheless, they had meantime treated of other points. Coming back at
last to the point of religion, the States-General had taken a resolution,
and had given them their dismissal, without being willing to hear a word
more, or to make a single proposition of moderation or accommodation.

He could not refrain from saying that the commissioners had been treated
roughly. Their High Mightinesses had fixed the tim