“It is naught but wrath and anguish,” answered M. Beuningen with emotion. “M. de Witt hath but recovered from a raging fever to find himself execrated. He hath written a justification of himself—about the Secret Service money, and the ill supplying of the Army—but who will listen to sober reason?”
“And the peace proposals please no one?”
Coenraad Beuningen replied hotly—
“They are insolent—impossible. When M. de Groot read them to the States, many wept and wrung their hands.… They have asked five days in which to consider them.”
He paused a moment, then added—
“The shops are closed, all business suspended. This week they did not print The Gazette; the Binnenhof is besieged with angry people—one feeling appears to warm them against the chill of despair, and that is the firmness of the Prince.”
“These things point to a revolution from within even if we escape conquest without.”
“The Prince hath always had the people, and now they believe he can save them——”
“Do they believe,” asked M. Bentinck, “that by making him Stadtholder they will mollify Charles into breaking with Louis?”
“Some may, I do not.”