Meantime the Hispaniolated counsellors of Duke John had strangled--as it was strongly suspected--his duchess, who having gone to bed in perfect health one evening was found dead in her bed next morning, with an ugly mark on her throat; and it was now the purpose of these statesmen to find a new bride for their insane sovereign in the ever ready and ever orthodox house of Lorrain. And the Protestant brothers-in-law and nephews and nieces were making every possible combination in order to check such dark designs, and to save these important territories from the ubiquitous power of Spain. The stadholder had also family troubles at this period. His sister Emilia had conceived a desperate passion for Don Emmanuel, the pauper son of the forlorn pretender to Portugal, Don Antonio, who had at last departed this life. Maurice was indignant that a Catholic, an outcast, and, as it was supposed, a bastard, should dare to mate with the daughter of William of Orange-Nassau; and there were many scenes of tenderness, reproaches, recriminations, and 'hysterica passio,' in which not only the lovers, the stadholder and his family, but also the high and mighty States-General, were obliged to enact their parts. The chronicles are filled with the incidents, which, however, never turned to tragedy, nor even to romance, but ended, without a catastrophe, in a rather insipid marriage. The Princess Emilia remained true both to her religion and her husband during a somewhat obscure wedded life, and after her death Don Emmanuel found means to reconcile himself with the King of Spain and to espouse, in second nuptials, a Spanish lady. On the 4th of August, Maurice arrived at Arnhem with a force of seven thousand foot and twelve hundred horse. Hohenlo was with him, and William Lewis, and there was yet another of the illustrious house of Nassau in the camp, Frederick Henry, a boy in his thirteenth year, the youngest born of William the Silent, the grandson of Admiral de Coligny, now about; in this his first campaign, to take the first step in a long and noble career. Having reduced the town and castle of Alphen, the stadholder came before Rheinberg, which he very expeditiously invested. During a preliminary skirmish William Lewis received a wound in the leg, while during the brief siege Maurice had a narrow escape from death, a cannon-ball passing through his tent and over his head as he lay taking a brief repose upon his couch. On the 19th, Rheinberg, the key to that portion of the river, surrendered. On the 31st the stadholder opened his batteries upon the city of Meurs, which capitulated on the 2nd of September; the commandant, Andrew Miranda, stipulating that he should carry off an old fifty- pounder, the only piece of cannon in the place. Maurice gave his permission with a laugh, begging Miranda not to batter down any cities with his big gun.