“His popularity is at fever height. He further pleases the people by declaring for war, and wishing to break off the negotiations I have with so much labour been keeping open. It seems as if I could do nothing right and he nothing wrong.
“God help us in our extremity.
“I cannot tell you how I miss the pleasure of your company. I know that this lamentable war is the defeat of your policy as it is of mine, and that you wish us nothing but good; it is another motive for me to desire to be free of these unhappy times, that we might meet and converse again. Keep me in your heart always, I pray you, and write to me privately when you have the leisure.
“MM. Condé, Turenne, Vauban, and Luxemberg are with His Majesty at Charleroi, and one of the finest armies, I hear, that ever left France. I still keep up a correspondence with M. de Louvois, but I have little hope of obtaining reason and justice from a rapacious minister and a vainglorious king.
“But He who hath put these afflictions on me will teach me how to bear them, and I must not repine against what He chooses to lay on me.
“Give my loving duty to your lady, and take as much yourself from one who will always be your friend,
“John de Witt.
“Given at my house in the Kneuterdyk Avenue, May 17, 1672. The Hague.”
The Grand Pensionary shook the sand over his letter, folded and sealed it, then wrote on the cover in his refined, clear hand: “To the Honourable Sir William Temple, Baronet, at his residence at Sheen, in the County of Surrey, England.”
It was late afternoon. When the Grand Pensionary rose and raised his eyes he saw a glimmer of gold and green through the window beside his desk, the quiver of the trees, the glow of the sunshine in the garden, which was filled with narcissi, daffodils, and tulips arranged in circles, half-moons, and straight bars of colour among the close grass and neat gravel-paths.