too dangerous.  A deputation from the duchy of Cleves has also come and begged me to postpone my departure, since they had petitioned your grace anew to leave me in the duchy of Cleves as their stadtholder.  And if all this were not so, there is yet another reason which must prevent my departure from here.  But this I dare not commit to writing, for a letter may be so easily lost, and to read such a thing would furnish our enemies an occasion of rejoicing and triumph.  Therefore I have told all to young Balthazar von Schlieben, and he will in my name faithfully and most reverentially communicate to you, your Electoral Highness and my most gracious father, the true and principal cause which prevents my setting forth from Holland.’”

“Well, speak then!” cried the Elector impatiently.  “Speak, Schlieben—­what is it?”

“Will not my lord and husband first hear the Electoral Prince’s letter to the end?” asked the Electress.  “Here follow some cordial, affectionate words, and assurances of the most filial respect and most submissive love.”

“Can I value them, yes, can I value any of them all?” answered George William passionately.  “When we will prove nothing by deeds, then we make speeches, and when we are disobedient in act, then we asseverate with words of love and reverence.  Speak, then, Balthazar von Schlieben, since you have been thus commissioned by the Electoral Prince.  What is this most weighty of reasons which forbids the departure of the Electoral Prince from Holland?”

“Your Electoral Highness, it is debt, it is the total want of money.”

The Elector started up as if an adder had stung him.  “Debts!” he cried in thundering voice.  “Want of money!  Will this litany never, never cease?  What a wild, extravagant life the Electoral Prince must lead to be for ever and ever wanting money, and no sooner are his debts paid than he contracts new ones!”

“Husband,” said the Electress soothingly, “it does not reflect upon the life our son leads that he is out of money, but proves that he has not received a sufficiently ample allowance.  Just reflect that three years ago, when he undertook this journey to Holland, you did not give him a red cent, and that I had to give him from my little savings three thousand dollars that he might be able to travel at all.[6] A considerable portion of this must have been expended during the tedious journey, with his retinue.”

“If any one were to listen to you, Electress, he would really suppose that the Electoral Prince had lived upon those three thousand dollars lent him by you from that time up to the present.  You forget, however, that, already in the year 1636, therefore the very next year after the Electoral Prince set out upon his journey, the states at the diet of Koenigsberg voted the large sum of seven thousand dollars to the Electoral Prince for the prosecution of his studies, over which they made a great outcry even then, since the owner of each rood of land must be taxed five groschen