But God forgive them all.

In times like these, one must hold one's tongue.

One must keep still, in order not to stir up a hornet's nest." In short, the Cardinal, little by little, during the last year of his residence in the Netherlands, was enabled to spread a canvas before his sovereign's eye, in which certain prominent figures, highly colored by patiently accumulated touches, were represented as driving a whole nation, against its own will, into manifest revolt.

The estates and the people, he said, were already tired of the proceedings of the nobles, and those personages would find themselves very much mistaken in thinking that men who had any thing to lose would follow them, when they began a rebellion against his Majesty.

On the whole, he was not desirous of prolonging his own residence, although, to do him justice, he was not influenced by fear.