"Nay, if that is your rule, that old Laws and Deeds are to come in bar of new, we," cry a multitude of persons,--French Dukes of Nevers, and all manner of remote, exotic figures among them,--"we are the real heirs! Ravensburg, Mark, Berg, Ravenstein, this patch and the other of that large Duchy of yours, were they not from primeval time expressly limited to heirs-male? Heirs-male; and we now are the nearest heirs-male of said patches and portions; and will prove it!"--In short, there never was such a Lawsuit,--so fat an affair for the attorney species, if that had been the way of managing it,--as this of Cleve was likely to prove. THE KAISER'S THOUGHTS ABOUT IT, AND THE WORLD'S. What greatly complicated the affair, too, was the interest the Kaiser took in it. The Kaiser could not well brook a powerful Protestant in that country; still less could his Cousin the Spaniard. Spaniards, worn to the ground, coercing that world-famous Dutch Revolt, and astonished to find that they could not coerce it at all, had resolved at this time to take breath before trying farther. Spaniards and Dutch, after Fifty years of such fighting as we know, have made a Twelve-years' Truce (1609): but the battled Spaniard, panting, pale in his futile rage and sweat, has not given up the matter; he is only taking breath, and will try it again. Now Cleve is his road into Holland, in such adventure; no success possible if Cleve be not in good hands. Brandenburg is Protestant, powerful; Brandenburg will not do for a neighbor there. Nor will Pfalz-Neuburg. A Protestant of Protestants, this Palatine Neuburg too,--junior branch, possible heir in time coming, of KUR-PFALZ (Elector Palatine) himself, in the Rhine Countries; of Kur-Pfalz, who is acknowledged Chief Protestant: official "President" of the "Evangelical Union" they have lately made among them in these menacing times;--Pfalz-Neuburg too, this young Wolfgang Wilhelm, if he do not break off kind, might be very awkward to the Kaiser in Cleve-Julich. Nay Saxony itself; for they are all Protestants:--unless perhaps Saxony might become pliant, and try to make itself useful to a munificent Imperial House? Evidently what would best suit the Kaiser and Spaniards, were this, That no strong Power whatever got footing in Cleve, to grow stronger by the possession of such a country:--BETTER than best it would suit, if he, the Kaiser, could himself get it smuggled into his hands, and there hold it fast! Which privately was the course resolved upon at headquarters.--In this way the "Succession Controversy of the Cleve Duchies" is coming to be a very high matter; mixing itself, up with the grand Protestant-Papal Controversy, the general armed-lawsuit of mankind in that generation. Kaiser, Spaniard, Dutch, English, French Henri IV. and all mortals, are getting concerned in the decision of it. Chapter XIV. -- SYMPTOMS OF A GREAT WAR COMING.