As he walked up and down the plain little room he vowed that the difficulties should be conquered, and that even if the Bourbon lilies were flying over Brussels he would lead an armament to England that year. CHAPTER IX FRANCE MOVES Midway through September and a beautiful day of pure gold the Prince was riding home through the brown-leaved woods that surrounded his villa. Contrary to his custom, he rode slowly, and constantly checked his fine animal, for he was thinking deeply, and those moments when he rode to and from his house were almost the only time when he was alone and not under the necessity of speaking to some one. He had just come from the last of the private sittings of the States, which had given their formal assent to the gigantic enterprise he meditated. He had now no further difficulty with his own country. The merchants, exasperated by the refusal of King Louis to allow herrings and woven goods from Holland into his country, had stifled opposition to the Prince in Amsterdam. He had always been sure of the rest of the Provinces, who, after the late persecutions of Protestants in France, the refusal to allow the Dutch in that country to retire to Holland, the constant fears they had been under since King James commenced rebuilding his navy and King Louis commenced his aggressions in Cologne, looked to the Prince with that same passionate devotion as they had done in ’72, and trusted to him to save them again from dangers little less pressing; for, the last year past, Gaspard Fagel had been encouraging this dread of an armed alliance between France and England which seemed so near consummation and would be fatal to the very existence of the United Provinces. It was from abroad came the difficulties that, for the last six months, had made the Prince’s days almost unbearably anxious; and as the time drew near that anxiety became a lively torture absolutely unguessed at by those who judged the Prince by his calm, almost cold quiet. Certainly the Spartan boy with the ferret under his cloak showed no more heroic fortitude than did the Stadtholder during these weeks of preparation. Of those who surrounded him perhaps only two, his friend William Bentinck and Gaspard Fagel, understood his position, and even these could not share his sufferings, however much they might his disquietude. From the allies whom, during the last two years, he had been marshalling into a league against Louis, there was little to fear, though it required delicate handling not to offend Catholic potentates such as the Pope and the Emperor; but from France was fearful and pressing danger, and England, where eventually success or failure must lie, was a suspicious quantity to William, who had been tricked and dealt ill with (though never deceived) by English politics all his life.