The Emperor remained at Augsburg throughout the summer, endeavouring to effect a lasting settlement of the religious question. On the 30th of June the so-called "Interim" was proclaimed, a compromise which satisfied no one, and was described by Thomas Hoby, a young Englishman who came to Augsburg this summer on his way to Italy, as an attempt to set up the old Babylon again in Germany.[407] A fortnight later the Diet was prorogued, and Charles started for the Netherlands, where he arrived on the 8th of September, after more than two years' absence. A few weeks before his arrival a marriage had taken place, greatly to Mary's satisfaction, between the widowed Princess of Orange and the Duke of Aerschot.[408] This nobleman, the premier peer of the realm and doyen of the Golden Fleece, had lost his second wife in 1544, but was still in the prime of life, and, as his daughter-in-law, Louise de Guise, told her sister, was honoured and beloved throughout the Netherlands. Christina could not herself be present at the wedding, but her brother-in-law Nicolas went to Brussels to give his sister away. Here he fell in love with Count Egmont's sister Margaret, and asked her hand in marriage. This alliance met with the warm approval of the Emperor and the Regent, but caused Christina many searchings of heart. Already more than one attempt had been made by the Guises to marry Vaudemont to a French bride, and she feared that this union would excite great displeasure in some quarters. In her alarm she wrote to the Emperor, begging him to forbid the marriage as dangerous to the welfare of her State. Charles, however, declined to interfere, and sent Granvelle's brother, Chantonnay, to advise his niece politely to mind her own business. "Since the Count of Vaudemont is bent on marrying," he wrote to his Envoy, "it is far better that he should come here for a wife than go to France; and the Duchess need not feel in any way responsible for the alliance, which is entirely his own doing.... And, indeed, I do not see how he could honourably break his word, since we ourselves urged our cousins of Egmont to agree to his proposals. But tell him to come here as soon as he can, to prevent the French from making any more mischief!"[409] [Sidenote: DEC., 1548] ADOLF OF HOLSTEIN]