We could not answer sooner as the French ambassadors had audience of us this forenoon and we were visiting his Excellency in the afternoon.

Wishing your worship good evening, we are your very good friend." Next day Count William wrote again.

"We have taken occasion," he said, "to inform his Excellency that you were inclined to enter into communication with him in regard to an accommodation of the religious difficulties and to the cashiering of the Waartgelders.

He answered that he could accept no change in the matter of the National Synod, but nevertheless would be at your disposal whenever your worship should be pleased to come to him." Two days afterwards Barneveld made his appearance at the apartments of the Stadholder.

The two great men on whom the fabric of the Republic had so long rested stood face to face once more.
The Advocate, with long grey beard and stern blue eye, haggard with illness and anxiety, tall but bent with age, leaning on his staff and wrapped in black velvet cloak--an imposing magisterial figure; the florid, plethoric Prince in brown doublet, big russet boots, narrow ruff, and shabby felt hat with its string of diamonds, with hand clutched on swordhilt, and eyes full of angry menace, the very type of the high-born, imperious soldier--thus they surveyed each other as men, once friends, between whom a gulf had opened.
Barneveld sought to convince the Prince that in the proceedings at Utrecht, founded as they were on strict adherence to the laws and traditions of the Provinces, no disrespect had been intended to him, no invasion of his constitutional rights, and that on his part his lifelong devotion to the House of Nassau had suffered no change.