History of the United Netherlands, 1607b | Page 5

Placed in control of the
exchequer at a later period, he was never accused of robbery or
peculation. He was a hard- working, not overpaid, very intelligent
public functionary. He was made president of the parliament, or

supreme tribunal of Burgundy, and minister of state, and was
recognised as one of the ablest jurists and most skilful politicians in the
kingdom. An elderly man, with a tall, serene forehead, a large dark eye
and a long grey beard, he presented an image of vast wisdom and
reverend probity. He possessed--an especial treasure for a statesman in
that plotting age--a singularly honest visage. Never was that face more
guileless, never was his heart more completely worn upon his sleeve,
than when he was harbouring the deepest or most dangerous designs.
Such was the "good fellow," whom that skilful reader of men, Henry of
France, had sent to represent his interests and his opinions at the
approaching conferences. What were those opinions? Paul V. and his
legates Barberini, Millino, and the rest, were well enough aware of the
secret strings of the king's policy, and knew how to touch them with
skill. Of all things past, Henry perhaps most regretted that not he, but
the last and most wretched of the Valois line, was sovereign of France
when the States-General came to Paris with that offer of sovereignty
which had been so contumaciously refused.
If the object were attainable, the ex-chief of the Huguenots still meant
to be king of the Netherlands as sincerely as Philip II. had ever
intended to be monarch of France. But Henry was too accurate a
calculator of chances, and had bustled too much in the world of realities,
to exhaust his strength in striving, year after year, for a manifest
impossibility. The enthusiast, who had passed away at last from the
dreams of the Escorial into the land of shadows, had spent a lifetime,
and melted the wealth of an empire; but universal monarchy had never
come forth from his crucible. The French king, although possessed
likewise of an almost boundless faculty for ambitious visions, was
capable of distinguishing cloud-land from substantial empire. Jeannin,
as his envoy, would at any rate not reveal his master's secret aspirations
to those with whom he came to deal, as openly as Philip had once
unveiled himself to Jeannin.
There could be no doubt that peace at this epoch was the real interest of
France. That kingdom was beginning to flourish again, owing to the
very considerable administrative genius of Bethune, an accomplished
financier according to the lights of the age, and still more by reason of
the general impoverishment of the great feudal houses and of the clergy.
The result of the almost interminable series of civil and religious wars

had been to cause a general redistribution of property. Capital was
mainly in the hands of the middle and lower classes, and the
consequence of this general circulation of wealth through all the
channels of society was precisely what might have been expected, an
increase of enterprise and of productive industry in various branches.
Although the financial wisdom of the age was doing its best to impede
commerce, to prevent the influx of foreign wares, to prohibit the
outflow of specie--in obedience to the universal superstition, which was
destined to survive so many centuries, that gold and silver alone
constituted wealth--while, at the same time, in deference to the idiotic
principle of sumptuary legislation, it was vigorously opposing mulberry
culture, silk manufactures, and other creations of luxury, which, in spite
of the hostility of government sages, were destined from that time
forward to become better mines of wealth for the kingdom than the
Indies had been for Spain, yet on the whole the arts of peace were in
the ascendant in France.
The king, although an unscrupulous, self-seeking despot and the
coarsest of voluptuaries, was at least a man of genius. He had also too
much shrewd mother-wit to pursue such schemes as experience had
shown to possess no reality. The talisman "Espoir," emblazoned on his
shield, had led him to so much that it was natural for him at times to
think all things possible.
But he knew how to renounce as well as how to dare. He had
abandoned his hope to be declared Prince of Wales and successor to the
English crown, which he had cherished for a brief period, at the epoch
of the Essex conspiracy; he had forgotten his magnificent dream of
placing the crown of the holy German empire upon his head, and if he
still secretly resolved to annex the Netherlands to his realms, and to
destroy his excellent ally, the usurping, rebellious, and heretic Dutch
republic, he had craft enough to work towards his aim in the dark, and
the common sense to