When the Elector received this letter there were present at the palace Prince Christiern of Meissen, Generalissimo of the Empire, uncle of that Prince Friedrich of Meissen who had been defeated at Mühlberg and was still laid up with his wounds, also the Grand Chancellor of the Tribunal, Count Wrede, Count Kallheim, President of the Chancery of State, and the two lords, Hinz and Kunz Tronka, the former Cup-bearer, the latter Chamberlain--all confidential friends of the sovereign from his youth. The Chamberlain, Sir Kunz, who in his capacity of privy councilor, attended to the private correspondence of his master and had the right to use his name and seal, was the first to speak. He once more explained in detail that never, on his own authority, would he have suppressed the complaint which the horse-dealer had lodged in court against his cousin the Squire, had it not been for the fact that, misled by false statements, he had believed it an absolutely unfounded and worthless piece of mischief-making. After this he passed on to consider the present state of affairs. He remarked that by neither divine nor human laws had the horse-dealer been warranted in wreaking such horrible vengeance as he had allowed himself to take for this mistake. The Chamberlain then proceeded to describe the glory that would fall upon the damnable head of the latter if they should negotiate with him as with a recognized military power, and the ignominy which would thereby be reflected upon the sacred person of the Elector seemed to him so intolerable that, carried away by the fire of his eloquence, he declared he would rather let worst come to worst, see the judgment of the mad rebel carried out and his cousin, the Squire, led off to Kohlhaasenbrück to fatten the black horses, than know that the proposition made by Dr. Luther had been accepted. The Lord High Chancellor of the Tribunal of Justice, Count Wrede, turning half way round toward him, expressed regret that the Chamberlain had not, in the first instance, been inspired with such tender solicitude for the reputation of the sovereign as he was displaying in the solution of this undoubtedly delicate affair. He represented to the Elector his hesitation about employing the power of the state to carry out a manifestly unjust measure. He remarked, with a significant allusion to the great numbers which the horse-dealer was continually recruiting in the country, that the thread of the crime threatened in this way to be spun out indefinitely, and declared that the only way to sunder it and extricate the government happily from that ugly quarrel was to act with plain honesty and to make good, directly and without respect of person, the mistake which they had been guilty of committing.