halls.  They practice wanton luxury, they live amid pomp and pleasure, arrange magnificent hunts and splendid entertainments, while the people cry out for hunger.  They make merry in Count Schwarzenberg’s palace, and while the burgher, whose last cent he has seized for the payment of taxes and imposts, creeps about in rags, he struts by in velvet clothes, decked out with gold and precious stones, and laughingly boasts that half the Mark of Brandenburg might be bought at the price of one of his court suits.  Most gracious Prince, yesterday the steward of your father, with the Electoral consent, brought out the velvet caps which had been kept in the Electoral wardrobe, took off the genuine silver lace with which they were trimmed, and sold it to the Jews, in order to pay the servants their month’s wages,[24] and the count’s servants yesterday received new liveries, so thickly set with gold lace that the scarlet cloth was hardly distinguishable underneath.  The Stadtholder in the Mark revels in superfluity, while the Elector in the Mark almost suffers want, and esteems himself happy if he can give one piece of land after another to his minister as security for the payment of debt.  Oh, it is enough to drive one to despair, and make him tear his hair for rage and grief, when he sees the state of things here, and must perceive that the Elector is nothing and the Stadtholder everything.  To his adherents he gives offices and dignities, and those whom he knows to be attached to the interests of the Electoral family he removes from court, and replaces by his favorites and servants.  Upon the Colonels von Kracht and von Rochow he has bestowed good positions, making them commandants of Berlin and Spandow, with double salaries, but me, whom he knows to be the faithful servant of the Electoral family, he has banished from court and sent to Kuestrin with only half as high a salary as the other two have.  From the Electoral privy council he has also removed all those gentlemen who were bold enough to lift up their voices against him, and has introduced such men as say yes to everything that he desires and asks.  No longer does an honest, upright word reach the Electoral ear, and while the whole people lament and cry out against Schwarzenberg, fearing him as they do the devil himself, our Elector fancies that his Stadtholder is as much beloved by the people of the Mark Brandenburg as by the Emperor at Vienna.  But it is just so; Catholics and Imperialists will Schwarzenberg make us; ever he presses us further and further from our comrades in the faith, the Swedes and Dutch; ever he draws us closer to the Catholics; and if he could succeed in making the Elector Catholic, removing all Evangelists and Reformers from court, and putting Catholics in their places, then he would rejoice and obtain a high reward from the Emperor and Pope.”

“And you believe, Burgsdorf, that he will do such a thing, and esteem such a thing possible?” asked the Electoral Prince, with a sly smile.