remarks, that it
is to be regretted he did not mention the places of the Ancients from
whence he took these extracts.

VII. After having lived a year in the noise of Paris he was desirous of
enjoying for some time the quiet of the country. The President de Meme
offered him one of his seats, Balagni near Senlis. Grotius accepted it,
and passed there the spring and summer of the year 1623. In this castle
he began his great work[146] which singly would be sufficient to render
its author's name immortal; I mean the treatise _Of the rights of war
and peace_, of which we shall speak more fully elsewhere. He had with
him his family and four friends; and was visited by the most
distinguished men of learning, among others Salmasius and Rigaut. He had
all the books he could desire: Francis de Thou the President's son, who
succeeded to his father's library, one of the best in Europe, gave him
the free use of it. Grotius, who knew the President de Meme to be a most
zealous Roman Catholic, was careful to regulate his conduct in such a
manner that the President might never repent his favouring him with the
use of his house: he gave directions that while he was at Balagni no
butchers meat should be brought to table on Fridays or Saturdays; he
received none of the Dutch refugee Ministers there; no psalms nor hymns
were sung; in fine, he would have no public nor even private exercise of
the Protestant Religion performed; and would see only those whom he
could not decently refuse. From Balagni he sometimes made excursions to
St. Germain, where the court was, in order to cultivate the friendship
of the ministry. Having learnt that the President de Meme wanted to
reside himself at Balagni, he quitted it, and retired to Senlis in the
beginning of August: in October he came back to Paris.

His wife's affairs obliging her to make a journey to Zealand, she set
out for that province in the summer 1624. In her absence Grotius was
seized with a violent dysentery. October 18th, 1624, he writes to his
brother that he had been three weeks confined to his bed, and four times
blooded. The news of his illness threw his wife into a fever. As soon as
it was abated she set out for Paris without waiting the return of her
strength. The pleasure of seeing her again and the care she took of him
wrought a wonderful change in Grotius: in fine, after two months
dangerous illness he began to mend, and in a little time was perfectly
recovered, so that he was n