mbering by us here;--and, in all these
marriage-contracts, Wilhelm and his Lawyers expressed themselves to the
like effect, and in the like elaborate sixfold manner: so that Wilhelm
and they thought there could nowhere in the world be any doubt about it.

Shortly after signing the last of these marriage-contracts, or perhaps
it was in the course of signing them, Duke Wilhelm had a stroke of
palsy. He had, before that, gone into Papistry again, poor man. The
truth is, he had repeated strokes; and being an abrupt, explosive Herr,
he at last quite yielded to palsy; and sank slowly out of the world, in
a cloud of semi-insanity, which lasted almost twenty years. [Died 25th
January, 1592, age 76.] Duke Wilhelm did leave a Son, Johann Wilhelm,
who succeeded him as Duke. But this Son also proved explosive; went
half and at length wholly insane. Jesuit Priests, and their intrigues to
bring back a Protestant country to the bosom of the Church, wrapped the
poor man, all his days, as in a burning Nessus'-Shirt; and he did little
but mischief in the world. He married, had no children; he accused his
innocent Wife, the Jesuits and he, of infidelity. Got her judged,
not properly sentenced; and then strangled her, he and they, in her
bed:--"Jacobea of Baden (1597);" a thrice-tragic history. Then he
married again; Jesuits being extremely anxious for an Orthodox heir:
but again there came no heir; there came only new blazings of the
Nessus'-Shirt. In fine, the poor man died (Spring, 1609), and made
the world rid of him. Died 25th March, 1609; that is the precise
date;--about a month before our new Elector, Johann Sigismund, got his
affairs winded up at the Polish Court, and came galloping home in such
haste. There was pressing need of him in the Cleve regions.

For the painful exactitude of Duke Wilhelm and his Lawyers has profited
little; and there are claimants on claimants rising for that valuable
Cleve Country. As indeed Johann Sigismund had anticipated, and been
warned from all quarters, to expect. For months past, he has had his
faculties bent, with lynx-eyed attention, on that scene of things;
doubly and trebly impatient to get Preussen soldered up, ever since
this other matter came to the bursting-point. What could be done by the
utmost vigilance of his Deputies, he had done. It was the 25th of March
when the mad Duke died: on the 4th of April, Johann Sigismund's Deputy,
attended by a Notary to record the act, "fixed up the Brand