st popular man in the
commonwealth. He had more than once been obliged to listen to opprobrious
language from the prince, and it was even whispered that he had been
threatened with personal violence. That Maurice was perpetually
denouncing him in public and private, as a traitor, a papist, a Spanish
partisan, was notorious. He had just been held up to the States of the
union and of his own province by unknown voices as a criminal worthy of
death. Was it to be wondered at that a man of sixty, who had passed his
youth, manhood, and old age in the service of the republic, and was
recognised by all as the ablest, the most experienced, the most
indefatigable of her statesmen, should be seriously desirous of
abandoning an office which might well seem to him rather a pillory than a
post of honour?

"As for neighbour Barneveld," said recorder Aerssens, little dreaming of
the foul witness he was to bear against that neighbour at a terrible
moment to come, "I do what I can and wish to help him with my blood. He
is more courageous than I. I should have sunk long ago, had I been
obliged to stand against such tempests. The Lord God will, I hope, help
him and direct his understanding for the good of all Christendom, and for
his own honour. If he can steer this ship into a safe harbour we ought to
raise a golden statue of him. I should like to contribute my mite to it.
He deserves twice much honour, despite all his enemies, of whom he has
many rather from envy than from reason. May the Lord keep him in health,
or it will go hardly with us all."

Thus spoke some of his grateful countrymen when the Advocate was
contending at a momentous crisis with storms threatening to overwhelm the
republic. Alas! where is the golden statue?

He believed that the truce was the most advantageous measure that the
country could adopt. He believed this with quite as much sincerity as
Maurice held to his conviction that war was the only policy. In the
secret letter of the French ambassador there is not a trace of suspicion
as to his fidelity to the commonwealth, not the shadow of proof of the
ridiculous accusation that he wished to reduce the provinces to the
dominion of Spain. Jeannin, who had no motive for concealment in his
confidential correspondence with his sovereign, always rendered
unequivocal homage to the purity and patriotism of the Advocate and the
Prince.

He returned to the States-General and to the discharge of his functions
as Advocate