were contained in it. I now state to your highness that I will keep it
all as becomes a prince, and conform to it." Thereupon he gave the
Elector his hand.--

What now was the amount and meaning of this promise on the part of the
Prince? Almost nothing. He would conform to the demands of the Elector,
exactly as he had hitherto said he would conform to them. Taken in
connexion with his steady objections to sign and seal any instrument on
the subject--with his distinct refusal to the Landgrave (through Knuttel)
to allow the Princess an evangelical preacher or to receive the
sacraments in the Netherlands--with the vehement, formal, and public
protest, on the part of the Landgrave, against the marriage--with the
Prince's declarations to the Elector at Dresden, which were satisfactory
on all points save the religious point,--what meaning could this verbal
promise have, save that the Prince would do exactly as much with regard
to the religious question as he had always promised, and no more? This
was precisely what did happen. There was no pretence on the part of the
Elector, afterwards, that any other arrangement had been contemplated.
The Princess lived catholically from the moment of her marriage, exactly
as Orange had stated to the Duchess Margaret, and as the Elector knew
would be the case. The first and the following children born of the
marriage were baptized by Catholic priests, with very elaborate Catholic
ceremonies, and this with the full consent of the Elector, who sent
deputies and officiated as sponsor on one remarkable occasion.

Who, of all those guileless lambs then, Philip of Spain, the Elector of
Saxony, or Cardinal Granvelle, had been deceived by the language or
actions of the Prince? Not one. It may be boldly asserted that the
Prince, placed in a transition epoch, both of the age and of his own
character, surrounded by the most artful and intriguing personages known