“On the position of the Prince—and of M. de Witt?”
“I have only been at the Hague a week——”
But Hyacinthe St. Croix knew fairly well the man he dealt with.
“Come,” he said in an intimate tone that swept aside evasion, “you know as well as I do that this Government must fall.”
The words gave the young secretary a shock. He sat silent, sucking his pipe, not wishing to admit that he was startled.
The Frenchman leant back calmly in his chair.
“The whole feeling of the country is against M. de Witt,” he continued. “You must have seen it.”
It occurred to Florent, in a vague, impersonal sort of way, that the Grand Pensionary’s secretary had no right to be listening to these things, or even to be speaking at all to a Frenchman intriguing for his Ambassador; but he told himself that he served success, and success did not seem to lie with M. de Witt.
“Yet we are at peace at home and abroad,” he remarked, to probe the other.
St. Croix smiled.