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 which permitted of such liberality was not one to
be very materially increased by a dowry which might seem enormous to