r Electress might exert great influence and share in the
government of her son."

"Yes, indeed, they all count upon my death," groaned the Elector; "they
all long for the time when I shall be gathered to my fathers. They grudge
me life, although, forsooth, it is no light, enjoyable thing to me, but
has brought me trouble, deprivation, and want enough. But still, they
grudge it to me, and if they could shorten it, would all do so."

"But I, my beloved master and Elector--I stand by you. I have placed it
before myself as my sacred aim in life to guard you as a faithful dog
guards his master, and to turn aside from you all that threatens you with
danger and vexation. The Emperor, too, as your supreme protector, keeps
his benignant eye fixed upon you, his much-loved vassal, and his wrath
would crush all that should endeavor to injure you. There are, indeed,
many here who think that the Elector of Brandenburg ought to make himself
free and independent of that very Emperor, beneficent though he be, and,
because your highness stands in their way, they attach themselves to the
son, and, placing him at their head, wish to constitute him an opponent of
the Emperor and empire. The Electress has probably not yet forgiven and
forgotten that the Emperor put her brother under the ban of the empire,
and banished him from country and friends. And the Prince of Orange, and
the Sovereign States, the Swedes and all the enemies of his Imperial
Highness and your Electoral Grace, would all unite their efforts to render
the Electoral Prince a pliant tool in their hands. Therefore they wish to
detain him yet longer at The Hague, and so to bind him there that he shall
be wholly theirs, linked by an indissoluble chain. On that account they
wish to bring about this marriage with the Princess Ludovicka Hollandine.
I must confide to your highness the information that report has already
bruited it abroad, and that it is spoken of at the imperial court. I have
to-day received dispatches from Vienna which apprise me that the Emperor
is very much opposed to this matrimonial project, and will never give his
consent to it."

"And I, too, shall never give my consent!" screamed the Elector. "I will
not again be brought to feud and strife with Emperor and empire. I will
not range myself on the side of the Emperor's foes, and neither shall my
son. I have always said that the Electoral Prince was staying far too long
in foreign parts, and that he would retu