He had made but one public appearance since the coronation of Ferdinand in Prague.  Attended by his brother Maximilian, by King Ferdinand, and by Cardinal Khlesl, he had towards the end of the year 1617 paid a visit to the Elector John George at Dresden.  The Imperial party had been received with much enthusiasm by the great leader of Lutheranism.  The Cardinal had seriously objected to accompanying the Emperor on this occasion.  Since the Reformation no cardinal had been seen at the court of Saxony.  He cared not personally for the pomps and glories of his rank, but still as prince of the Church he had settled right of precedence over electors.  To waive it would be disrespectful to the Pope, to claim it would lead to squabbles.  But Ferdinand had need of his skill to secure the vote of Saxony at the next Imperial election.  The Cardinal was afraid of Ferdinand with good reason, and complied.  By an agreeable fiction he was received at court not as cardinal but as minister, and accommodated with an humble place at table.  Many looking on with astonishment thought he would have preferred to dine by himself in retirement.  But this was not the bitterest of the mortifications that the pastor and guide of Matthias was to suffer at the hands of Ferdinand before his career should be closed.  The visit at Dresden was successful, however.  John George, being a claimant, as we have seen, for the Duchies of Cleve and Julich, had need of the Emperor.  The King had need of John George’s vote.  There was a series of splendid balls, hunting parties, carousings.

The Emperor was an invalid, the King was abstemious, but the Elector was a mighty drinker.  It was not his custom nor that of his councillors to go to bed.  They were usually carried there.  But it was the wish of Ferdinand to be conciliatory, and he bore himself as well as he could at the banquet.  The Elector was also a mighty hunter.  Neither of his Imperial guests cared for field sports, but they looked out contentedly from the window of a hunting-lodge, before which for their entertainment the Elector and his courtiers slaughtered eight bears, ten stags, ten pigs, and eleven badgers, besides a goodly number of other game; John George shooting also three martens from a pole erected for that purpose in the courtyard.  It seemed proper for him thus to exhibit a specimen of the skill for which he was justly famed.  The Elector before his life closed, so says the chronicle, had killed 28,000 wild boars, 208 bears, 3543 wolves, 200 badgers, 18,967 foxes, besides stags and roedeer in still greater number, making a grand total of 113,629 beasts.  The leader of the Lutheran party of Germany had not lived in vain.