"The cook has often no meat to roast," said the Count, in the same letter, "so that we are often obliged to go supperless to bed." His lodgings were a half-roofed, half-finished, unfurnished barrack, where the stadholder passed his winter days and evenings in a small, dark, freezing-cold chamber, often without fire-wood.

Such circumstances were certainly not calculated to excite envy.

When in addition to such wretched parsimony, it is remembered that the Count was perpetually worried by the quarrels of the provincial authorities with each other and with himself, he may be forgiven for becoming thoroughly exhausted at last.

He was growing "grey and grizzled" with perpetual perplexity.

He had been fed with annoyance, as if--to use his own homely expression--"he had eaten it with a spoon." Having already loaded himself with a debt of six hundred thousand florins, which he had spent in the states' service, and having struggled manfully against the petty tortures of his situation, he cannot be severely censured for relinquishing his post.