For more than an hour and a half on one occasion of an uncommonly hot afternoon in April did Noel de Caron argue with her Majesty against these ill-boding negotiations, and ever and anon, oppressed by the heat of the weather and the argument, did the queen wander from one room of the palace to the other in search of cool air, still bidding the envoy follow her footsteps.  “We are travelling about like pilgrims,” said Elizabeth, “but what is life but a pilgrimage?”

Yet, notwithstanding this long promenade and these moral reflections, Caron could really not make out at the end of the interview whether or no she intended to send her commissioners.  At last he asked her the question bluntly.

“Hallo!  Hallo!” she replied.  “I have only spoken to my servant once, and I must obtain more information and think over the matter before I decide.  Be assured however that I shall always keep you informed of the progress of the negotiations, and do you inform the States that they may build upon me as upon a rock.”

After the envoy had taken his leave, the queen said to him in Latin, “Modicae fidei quare dubitasti?” Caron had however so nearly got out of the door that he did not hear this admonition.

This the queen perceived, and calling him by name repeated, “O Caron! modicae fidei quare dubitasti?” adding the injunction that he should remember this dictum, for he well knew what she meant by it.

Thus terminated the interview, while the negotiations with Spain, not for lack of good-will on her part, and despite the positive assertions to the contrary of Buzanval and other foreign agents, were destined to come to nothing.

At a little later period, at the time of certain informal and secret conferences at Gertruydenberg, the queen threatened the envoy with her severest displeasure, should the States dare to treat with Spain without her permission.  “Her Majesty called out to me,” said Caron, “as soon as I entered the room, that I had always assured her that the States neither would nor could make peace with the enemy.  Yet it was now looking very differently, she continued, swearing with a mighty oath that if the States should cheat her in that way she meant to revenge herself in such a fashion that men would talk of it through all eternity.”

The French Government was in a similar state of alarm in consequence of the Gertruydenberg conferences.

The envoy of the archdukes, Marquis d’Havre, reported on the other hand that all attempts to negotiate had proved fruitless, that Olden-Barneveld, who spoke for all his colleagues, was swollen with pride, and made it but too manifest that the States had no intention to submit to any foreign jurisdiction, but were resolved to maintain themselves in the form of a republic.

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: 

Children who had never set foot on the shore
Done nothing so long as aught remained to do
Fed on bear’s liver, were nearly poisoned to death
Inhabited by the savage tribes called Samoyedes