to that office.  No satisfactory explanation was ever given of this singular conclusion to a courtship, begun with the apparent consent of all parties.  It was hinted that the young lady did not fancy the Prince; but, as it was not known that a word had ever been exchanged between them, as the Prince, in appearance and reputation, was one of the most brilliant cavaliers of the age, and as the approval of the bride was not usually a matter of primary consequence in such marriages of state, the mystery seemed to require a further solution.  The Prince suspected Granvelle and the King, who were believed to have held mature and secret deliberation together, of insincerity.  The Bishop was said to have expressed the opinion, that although the friendship he bore the Prince would induce him to urge the marriage, yet his duty to his master made him think it questionable whether it were right to advance a personage already placed so high by birth, wealth, and popularity, still higher by so near an alliance with his Majesty’s family.  The King, in consequence, secretly instructed the Duchess of Lorraine to decline the proposal, while at the same time he continued openly to advocate the connexion.  The Prince is said to have discovered this double dealing, and to have found in it the only reasonable explanation of the whole transaction.  Moreover, the Duchess of Lorraine, finding herself equally duped, and her own ambitious scheme equally foiled by her unscrupulous cousin—­who now, to the surprise of every one, appointed Margaret of Parma to be Regent, with the Bishop for her prime minister—­had as little reason to be satisfied with the combinations of royal and ecclesiastical intrigue as the Prince of Orange himself.  Soon after this unsatisfactory mystification, William turned his attentions to Germany.  Anna of Saxony, daughter of the celebrated Elector Maurice, lived at the court of her uncle, the Elector Augustus.  A musket-ball, perhaps a traitorous one, in an obscure action with Albert of Brandenbourg, had closed the adventurous career of her father seven years before.  The young lady, who was thought to have inherited much of his restless, stormy character, was sixteen years of age.  She was far from handsome, was somewhat deformed, and limped.  Her marriage-portion was deemed, for the times, an ample one; she had seventy thousand rix dollars in hand, and the reversion of thirty thousand on the death of John Frederic the Second, who had married her mother after the death of Maurice.  Her rank was accounted far higher in Germany than that of William of Nassau, and in this respect, rather than for pecuniary considerations, the marriage seemed a desirable one for him.  The man who held the great Nassau-Chalons property, together with the heritage of Count Maximilian de Buren, could hardly have been tempted by 100,000 thalers.  His own provision for the children who might spring from the proposed marriage was to be a settlement of seventy thousand florins annually.  The fortune