George William was sorely puzzled as to his proceedings. To marriage he could have condescended with alacrity, but unfortunately there was ‘a promise in bar.’ With the view common to many co-heirs of the family, he had entered into an engagement with his brother Ernest Augustus, of Brunswick-Luneburg, and Bishop of Osnaburgh, never to marry. This concession had been purchased at a certain cost, and the end in view was the further enlargement of the dominions and influence of the House of Brunswick. If George William should not only succeed to Zell, but should leave the same to a legitimate heir, _that_ was a case which Ernest Augustus would be disposed to look upon as a grievous wrong. A price was paid, therefore, for the promised celibacy of his brother, and that brother was now actively engaged in meditating as to how he might, without disgrace, break a promise, and yet retain the money by which it had been purchased. His heart leaped within him as he thought how easily the whole matter might be arranged by a morganatic marriage --a marriage, in other words, with the left hand; an union sanctioned by the church but so far disallowed by the law that the children of such wedlock were, in technical terms, _infantes nullius_, ‘children of nobody,’ and could of course succeed to nobody’s inheritance. George William waited on the Seigneur d’Olbreuse with his morganatic offer; the poor refugee noble entertained the terms with much complacency, but left his child to determine on a point which involved such serious considerations for herself. They were accordingly placed with much respect at Eleanora’s feet, but she mused angrily thereon. She would not listen to the offer. In the meantime, these love-passages of young George William were productive of much unseemly mirth at Hanover, where the Bishop of Osnaburgh was keeping a not very decorous court. He was much more of a dragoon than a bishop, and indeed his flock were more to be pitied than his soldiers. The diocese of Osnaburgh was supplied with bishops by the most curious of rules; the rule was fixed at the period of the peace which followed the religious wars of Germany, and this rule was, that as Osnaburgh was very nearly divided as to the number of those who followed either church, it should have alternately a Protestant and a Romanist bishop. The result has been that Osnaburgh has had sad scapegraces for her prelates, but yet, in spite thereof, has maintained a religious respectability which might be envied by dioceses blessed with two diverse bishops at once, for ever anathematising the flocks of each other and their shepherds.