“Yes, many shall yet be brought within the ark of safety by my means!” cried Count Adam, in a lively manner.  “I know what I purpose, I know the great aims after which I have striven for twenty years with intrepid spirit, with ardor never to be chilled.  My son, with you I make no secret of my aims, and you must know them, that you may stand unflinching at my side.  It is true, I am ambitious.  I thirst for fame; it is true, I have labored for myself and forwarded my own personal interests as much as I could.  My aims, however, are not restricted to these private interests, they are higher, nobler!  I am the faithful servant and subject of my Emperor and lord; I am the believing and zealous son of our holy Church.  To the Emperor and the Church belong the fruits of my striving and my energy, and to promote the greatness and consideration of both is the ultimate object of all my labors and all my schemes.”

“And I, most gracious father, will take my station firmly at your side,” said Count Adolphus fervently.  “You will ever find in me an attentive pupil, eager to learn.”

“We have both a great mission to fulfill,” exclaimed Count Adam, “and it is well for us sometimes to place this clearly before our eyes, in order to be ever mindful of it, and never to forget it even in the pursuance of private ends.  You, too, remember this, my son, and act accordingly.  To the Emperor and the Church be all our services dedicated!  To render the Emperor great and mighty, to strengthen his consideration throughout the German Empire, is and shall be my aim as a statesman.  To extend continually the power and dominion of the Catholic religion is and shall be my task as a Christian, as a son of the Church, within whose pale alone is salvation.  God himself has chosen me for his tool, else how would it have been possible that the bigoted, reformed Elector should have selected me for his first and mightiest minister?  God wills that through me the influence of the Holy Roman See and the German Emperor be promoted and advanced; therefore has he caused me, the subject of the Emperor, an Austrian born, to become the servant of the Elector of Brandenburg.  But the servant has become master, and the Catholic Austrian is Stadtholder in the Mark, the almighty minister in the land of the heretic.  It is so, because through him this land is to be led back to the true faith and the Emperor, because through him is to be re-established the endangered supremacy of the Emperor of Germany!  The Protestant Electors would have exalted themselves against the power of Emperor and empire; with the help of the Swedes they would have cut up the Holy Roman Empire into a number of free, independent States, great and small, where Protestants, Reformers, and Lutherans would have enjoyed as great consideration as the Catholics, and over which the Emperor would no longer have exercised control.  The Protestant Elector of the Palatinate was to have been changed into a King, waving his scepter over