He knew them too well to complain because he did not find in them veracity, fidelity, consistency, disinterestedness.

The very utmost that he expected from them was that they would serve him as far as they could serve him without serious danger to themselves.

If he learned that, while sitting in his council and enriched by his bounty, they were trying to make for themselves at Saint Germains an interest which might be of use to them in the event of a counterrevolution he was more inclined to bestow on them the contemptuous commendation which was bestowed of old on the worldly wisdom of the unjust steward than to call them to a severe account.

But the crime of Marlborough was of a very different kind.

His treason was not that of a fainthearted man desirous to keep a retreat open for himself in every event, but that of a man of dauntless courage, profound policy and measureless ambition.