"The States have trusted me," answered the Prince. "Even the Loeventein faction are eager for me to depart on this expedition, in the hopes, maybe"—he smiled—"that I shall be slain or affronted. But I have anxieties."
He paused and looked at the water of the Vyverberg that lay glinting with autumn gold beneath the window.
"Mynheer," he added, "a country is a high stake—one's own country. Mynheer," he looked again into the face of the older man, "you have perhaps thought there was some wantonness in this my resolve, you have thought that I may have dared too much in offering to take beyond seas all the defences of the States."
"Never!" answered M. Heinsius firmly. "I understand and I applaud the policy of Your Highness."
"It is," said the Stadtholder, "on a sure bottom and to be justified. Yet, until I know what France doth, I am no better than a man on the rack."
"You think—even now?"
"Even now—if they were to fall on the frontier! Nought there but the Spaniards! But a little while will show us."
He paused again, then said, weighing his words, and with a strange mingling of simplicity and dignity.
"I am no King in this country, Mynheer, but the servant of the Republic, and you, who are a knowing man and one who hath the common welfare at heart, I would have hold me justified in this I do. I have been believed ambitious, but my ambition is one with the good of the States, and God knoweth that I do not take this tremendous risk from any such paltry motive, but because it is our chance, which if we do not take we are as good as lost."
"It is no flattery to say that I agree with Your Highness, who seeth farther and more clearly than most men."