So ended that interview.

Directly afterwards there was a conference between the States'
commissioners and the French envoys.

Jeannin employed all his powers of argument: and persuasion to influence
the Netherlanders against a rupture of the negotiations because of the
India trade. It would be better to abandon that commerce, so he urged,
than to give up the hope of peace. The commissioners failed to see the
logic or to melt at the eloquence of his discourse. They would have been
still less inclined, if that were possible, to move from their position,
had they known of the secret conferences which Jeannin had just been
holding with Isaac le Maire of Amsterdam, and other merchants practically
familiar with the India trade. Carrying out the French king's plan to
rob the republic of that lucrative traffic, and to transplant it, by
means of experienced Hollanders, into France, the president, while openly
siding with the States, as their most disinterested friend, was secretly
doing all in his power to destroy the very foundation of their
commonwealth.

Isaac le Maire came over from Amsterdam in a mysterious manner, almost in
disguise. Had his nocturnal dealings with the French minister been
known, he would have been rudely dealt with by the East India Company.
He was a native of Tournay, not a sincere republican therefore, was very
strongly affected to France, and declared that all his former fellow-
townsmen, and many more, had the fleur-de-lys stamped on their hearts.
If peace should be made without stipulation in favour of the East India
Company, he, with his three brothers, would do what they could to
transfer that corporation to France. All the details of such a