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"Why should van der Myle strut about, with his arms akimbo like a peacock?" complained Aerssens one day in confused metaphor. A question not easy to answer satisfactorily. The minister selected was a certain Baron Asperen de Langerac, wholly unversed in diplomacy or other public affairs, with abilities not above the average.
Langerac was especially instructed to do his best to assist in bringing about cordial relations, if that were possible, between the crown and the rebels, and meantime he was especially directed to defend du Maurier against the calumnious accusations brought against him, of which Aerssens had been the secret sower.
At the present moment his great designs were not yet openly traversed by a strong Protestant party within the very republic which he administered. "Look to it with earnestness and grave deliberation," he said to Langerac, "that they do not pursue us there with vain importunity to accept something so notoriously inadmissible and detrimental to the common weal.
The reader has seen how steadily and frankly the Advocate had kept Langerac as well as Caron informed of passing events, and how little concealment he made of his views in regard to the Synod, the Waartgelders, and the respective authority of the States-General and States-Provincial.
At the present moment his great designs were not yet openly traversed by a strong Protestant party within the very republic which he administered. "Look to it with earnestness and grave deliberation," he said to Langerac, "that they do not pursue us there with vain importunity to accept something so notoriously inadmissible and detrimental to the common weal.
On the other hand Langerac professed unbounded and almost childlike reverence for Barneveld, was devoted to his person, and breathed as it were only through his inspiration. Time would show whether those sentiments would outlast every possible storm.
"Now instead of friendship there is great anger here," said Langerac. The king forbade under vigorous penalties the departure of any French theologians to take part in the Synod, although the royal consent had nearly been given.
Jeannin, his own and his father-in-law's principal and most confidential friend, had only spoken with him half an hour and then departed for Burgundy, although promising to confer with him sympathetically on his return. "I am very displeased at his coming here," said Langerac, " . . . . . but he has found little friendship or confidence, and is full of woe and apprehension."
Langerac concluded by enclosing the Barneveld correspondence since the beginning of the year 1614, protesting that not a single letter had been kept back or destroyed.
But Langerac was a mere picker-up of trifles, a newsmonger who wrote a despatch to-day with information which a despatch was written on the morrow to contradict, while in itself conveying additional intelligence absolutely certain to be falsified soon afterwards.
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