M. Fagel could not forget that John de Witt was still the head of the Government.
“A compromise——” he began.
His smooth voice and the word he used stung the Prince into a rare exhibition of temper. He turned violently, with dark, fierce eyes and the whip bent double in his hand.
“Be damned to your compromise!” he cried. “John de Witt and the chaffering tradesmen who support him will have the French across the Rhine before the army is under canvas. I’ll have none of your cursed ‘ifs’ or ‘buts’—’tis all—or they save themselves.”
He snatched up his glove from where he had flung it on his entry.
“That is my answer, M. Fagel,” he said passionately, “and any remonstrance on the matter I shall consider an insult.”
The Secretary bowed.
He knew what de Pomponne had discovered, that the Prince was “tolerably firm and tolerably positive, and once he hath taken his resolution to argue with him is waste breath.”
He was aware, also, that what William wished he began to obtain, and that the expression “the country is with me” was no figment of speech.
The United Provinces were behind William of Orange, and to the rising power the prudent statesman made his court.