In the third act we find the Prince somewhat changed, but not to any great extent. After thinking over the matter in solitude he has finally grasped that the Elector could not allow the violation of his express command to pass without some sort of punishment. But is it not sufficient punishment for him to have spent some days in prison, and does he not, moreover, deserve a reward because he entered it voluntarily and did not strangle the jailer? Therefore he knows positively that the first person to visit him will announce that he is free, and when his friend Hohenzollern enters his cell, he exclaims "Well, then, I'm free of my imprisonment." But when the latter examines his position with very different eyes, when, by producing a series of threatening facts each one more ominous than the other, he gradually silences the Prince's emotion, which demonstrates exactly what the Elector can do and what he cannot do, when he even tells him at last that the death warrant is about to be brought for signature to the Elector's cabinet, the Prince finally loses his foolish feeling of security, and then of course he goes to the opposite extreme. Nay, when the anxious Hohenzollern further informs him that the Swedish ambassador, who has arrived on the occasion of the peace negotiations, would ask the hand of the Princess of Orange for his master, but that the Princess seems to have made her choice already and thus is apparently thwarting the Elector's plan, and when he asks the Prince if he is not in some way tangled up in all this, the latter cries out despairingly "I am lost," and hurries off to the Electress to entreat her to intervene in his behalf.