“He has the name,” Sir William Temple had said, and the words had seized Florent Van Mander’s slow but not dull imagination. He thought that the Englishman had expressed less than he felt, and longed to hear him again on the subject.
He had only seen Sir William twice, but there was something in his easy, almost careless, manner, in the slightly disdainful shrewdness of his remarks, that inspired the secretary with a respect he did not entertain for John de Witt. He had an uncomfortable feeling that the Grand Pensionary was a man who might be, without much difficulty, fooled.
“I serve my ideals,” he had said.
That annoyed Van Mander. He had not a very clear conception of an idealist, but he was tolerably certain that no man could be one and still be successful in a practical way, and it had struck him as a pointless and rather weak thing to say—“I serve my ideals.”
He had noted other remarks, too, of the same trend; a certain loftiness of outlook, an unworldly tolerance of detraction and malice, that did not please him. He would have preferred a master more eagerly alive to his own advantage, more conscious of evil in others and prepared to fight it on its own grounds.
Sir William had also said other things that remained in the young secretary’s mind. He had spoken of the curious situation, the Republican Minister instructing and watching the Prince—at once tutor and jailer—and Florent Van Mander thought that it was indeed curious, and a little foolish, too, on the part of John de Witt.
And there were yet other aspects of the situation that the previous conversation had not touched on, but which were nevertheless present to the roused mind of the secretary.
This Prince was cousin of the King of France, a figure of dazzling and alarming greatness, and nephew of the King of England; and both these were of an aspect menacing to the Republic, true—there was the Triple Alliance, but——
The young secretary became aware that he had bitten his pen till it was split and useless, and he laid it down with a vexed look. He greatly disliked to do anything careless or unmethodical, or even to become absorbed in reflections not in themselves necessary to present business.