and the Advocate's were not likely to make music together." This much of
predestination he did know, that if the Advocate and his friends were to
come to open conflict with the Prince of Orange-Nassau, the conqueror of
Nieuwpoort, it was predestined to go hard with the Advocate and his
friends.

The theological quibble did not interest him much, and he was apt to
blunder about it.

"Well, preacher," said he one day to Albert Huttenus, who had come to him
to intercede for a deserter condemned to be hanged, "are you one of those
Arminians who believe that one child is born to salvation and another to
damnation?"

Huttenus, amazed to the utmost at the extraordinary question, replied,
"Your Excellency will be graciously pleased to observe that this is not
the opinion of those whom one calls by the hateful name of Arminians, but
the opinion of their adversaries."

"Well, preacher," rejoined Maurice, "don't you think I know better?" And
turning to Count Lewis William, Stadholder of Friesland, who was present,
standing by the hearth with his hand on a copper ring of the
chimneypiece, he cried,

"Which is right, cousin, the preacher or I?"

"No, cousin," answered Count Lewis, "you are in the wrong."

Thus to the Catholic League organized throughout Europe in solid and
consistent phalanx was opposed the Great Protestant Union, ardent and