that country, as is well known, were most “potent at potting.”  “When the German finds himself sober,” said the bitter Badovaro, “he believes himself to be ill.”  Gladly, since the peace, they had welcomed the opportunities afforded for many a deep carouse with their Netherlands cousins.  The approaching marriage of the Prince of Orange with the Saxon princess—­an episode which will soon engage our attention—­gave rise to tremendous orgies.  Count Schwartzburg, the Prince’s brother-in-law, and one of the negotiators of the marriage, found many occasions to strengthen the bonds of harmony between the countries by indulgence of these common tastes.  “I have had many princes and counts at my table,” he wrote to Orange, “where a good deal more was drunk than eaten.  The Rhinegrave’s brother fell down dead after drinking too much malvoisie; but we have had him balsamed and sent home to his family.”

These disorders among the higher ranks were in reality so extensive as to justify the biting remark of the Venetian:  “The gentlemen intoxicate themselves every day,” said he, “and the ladies also; but much less than the men.”  His remarks as to the morality, in other respects, of both sexes were equally sweeping, and not more complimentary.

If these were the characteristics of the most distinguished society, it may be supposed that they were reproduced with more or less intensity throughout all the more remote but concentric circles of life, as far as the seductive splendor of the court could radiate.  The lesser nobles emulated the grandees, and vied with each other in splendid establishments, banquets, masquerades, and equipages.  The natural consequences of such extravagance followed.  Their estates were mortgaged, deeply and more deeply; then, after a few years, sold to the merchants, or rich advocates and other gentlemen of the robe, to whom they had been pledged.  The more closely ruin stared the victims in the face, the more heedlessly did they plunge into excesses.  “Such were the circumstances,” moralizes a Catholic writer, “to which, at an earlier period, the affairs of Catiline, Cethegus, Lentulus, and others of that faction had been reduced, when they undertook to overthrow the Roman republic.”  Many of the nobles being thus embarrassed, and some even desperate, in their condition, it was thought that they were desirous of creating disturbances in the commonwealth, that the payment of just debts might be avoided, that their mortgaged lands might be wrested by main force from the low-born individuals who had become possessed of them, that, in particular, the rich abbey lands held by idle priests might be appropriated to the use of impoverished gentlemen who could turn them to so much better account.  It is quite probable that interested motives such as these were not entirely inactive among a comparatively small class of gentlemen.  The religious reformation in every land of Europe derived a portion of its strength