Cleves, what advantage
can accrue to you from the stadtholdership of the Electoral Prince?" asked
the Elector hastily. "And how far would that go in furnishing redress for
your difficulties?"

"So far as this, your highness, that our stadtholder would shield and
protect us against the encroachments of inimical powers, and by his openly
expressed neutrality secure us against the claims of all parties. The
salvation of the duchy depends wholly and solely upon our having a neutral
chief resident among us, and we beseech and implore your Electoral
Highness to grant us such an one in the Electoral Prince, and to send his
lordship your son to the duchy armed with plenipotentiary powers.[1] It is
for the second time that the states of Cleves appeal with this earnest,
humble entreaty to the heart of their liege lord, and most urgently we beg
that this time we may have a hearing."

"Are you done, or have you anything further to say?" asked the Elector
impatiently.

"Your highness, only this have we to say besides, that the Prince of
Orange has promised to support our petition to your Electoral Highness,
and that he also is of opinion that the welfare of Cleves depends upon her
possessing a ruler, resident in the land and neutral."

"The Prince of Orange has only written to me that the states of Cleves
were of this mind, and had besought him to introduce it to my favorable
notice," exclaimed the Elector warmly. "Since you are now through with
your repeated suit, and have nothing more to say, I will give you my
answer without delay. But you might have known beforehand--you might have
been sure that if a sovereign has once made his subjects acquainted with
his wishes and opinions, he can not be influenced and made to swerve in
purpose by renewed application, but that he holds to what he has once
determined upon. And so I tell you now for the second time, that I can not
grant their petition to the states of Cleves. In the first place, because
I will not have the Electoral Prince longer separated from me, since he
has already been absent from here three years, and in these troublous
times we wish to have our son near us. In the second place, the presence
of the Electoral Prince in Cleves might not have the wished-for result. It
is rather to be feared that those in opposition to the Emperor's majesty
and the empire will not accommodate themselves to the strict treaty of
peace, nor forbear making aggression upon the Electoral Prince