“It is true,” muttered the Elector, “they would surely suspect and accuse you, and it would not mend matters to say that I myself gave orders that the Electoral Prince be allowed to come home quietly.”

“God forbid that such a thing should be said!” cried Schwarzenberg.  “No, rather let the whole world censure and condemn me—­rather let it be said that I have acted as the spiteful and unworthy enemy of the Electoral Prince—­than that they should dare even to cast one shadow upon my beloved master’s heart.  What matters it that they calumniate me, if they only venture not to attack and suspect your highness?”

“They shall not slander and suspect you, my Adam,” said the Elector, offering him his hand.  “For your sake let us suffer the Electoral Prince to come hither in triumph.  But we will remember it against him, and our love for him will not be thereby increased.”

“Yet I entreat your highness to receive your son kindly and graciously,” pleaded Schwarzenberg with insinuating voice.  “It is better, your highness, to try to chain him to you by goodness and love than by strictness and severity to repel him yet more, and force him to join the party of your opponents.  It is a great and powerful party, and I well know that it is their plan to place the Electoral Prince at their head, and through him to attain their ends.”

“And what are their ends?” asked the Elector, with lowering brow.

The count bent over closer to his ear, as if he feared letting even the walls hear what he had to say.

“Their ends are a transference of the government, and when this is effected a revolt from Emperor and empire, and a league with the Swedes and all Protestant German princes against Emperor and empire.”

“The transference of the government?  That means an insurrection, a revolution.  They would hurl me from my throne and ensconce my son there?”

“They hope that in your distress you will do, gracious sir, what your blessed father did.”

“Abdicate!” cried the Elector angrily.  “Abdicate in favor of my son?”

“In favor of the Electoral Prince, who has grown up in Holland to become a promising Prince, a general of the future, a brilliant leader of the Protestant Church, and of whom his followers say that he will be a second Gustavus Adolphus!”

“A second plague—­a second source of danger to myself!” screamed the Elector, striking with his clinched fist upon the arm of his chair.  “It was not enough that my brother-in-law Gustavus Adolphus brought me into trouble and distress, and caused the Emperor’s wrath to flame forth against me, so that I was really afraid that I would share the fate of my cousin the Margrave of Jaegerndorf, whom the Emperor put under his ban, declaring that he had forfeited his margraviate, and giving it over as a feudal tenure to Prince Liechstenstein!  I was only saved then from a like terrible fate by your intercession and fidelity!  It was you who,