The ambassadors expressed their thanks for the great and extraordinary
honour thus conferred on them, and they were then requested to get into a
royal carriage which had been sent out for that purpose. After much
ceremonious refusal they at last consented and, together with the Duke of
Vendome, drove through Paris in that vehicle into the Faubourg Saint
Germain. Arriving at the Hotel Gondy, they were, notwithstanding all
their protestations, escorted up the staircase into the apartments by the
Duke.

"This honour is notable," said the commissioners in their report to the
States, "and never shown to anyone before, so that our ill-wishers are
filled with spite."

And Peter Pecquius was of the same opinion. "Everyone is grumbling
here," about the reception of the States' ambassadors, "because such
honours were never paid to any ambassador whatever, whether from Spain,
England, or any other country."

And there were many men living and employed in great affairs of State,
both in France and in the Republic--the King and Villeroy, Barneveld and
Maurice--who could remember how twenty-six years before a solemn embassy
from the States had proceeded from the Hague to France to offer the
sovereignty of their country to Henry's predecessor, had been kept
ignominiously and almost like prisoners four weeks long in Rouen, and
had been thrust back into the Netherlands without being admitted even to
one audience by the monarch. Truly time, in the course of less than one
generation of mankind, had worked marvellous changes in the fortunes of
the Dutch Republic.