“After visiting the Prince, who is the prettiest child we ever set eyes upon, we returned to the Princess, and began again, to speak about Sir Cromwell’s letter, and our own answer to it. After a good deal of conversation on the subject, the Princess said to us, that all her hopes centred in God, and your Imperial Majesty, and that she held you in the room of father and mother, and was so affectionately attached to you, that it seemed almost impossible to her to have such an affection and love for a kinsman. She knew perfectly well, that it had not been your fault, if the affair of her marriage had remained in the state in which it is, that she really believed what we had told her to be the exact truth, in spite of the efforts made to persuade her to the contrary. Indeed, she owned to us, that about last Lent, the King her father had tried to convince her that your Imperial Majesty proceeded in the affair with the utmost dissimulation, and without any wish whatsoever to treat of it, so much so that it seemed as if the whole thing had been planned, in order to bring discredit upon him (the King). She, the Princess, had before and after her father’s representations, experienced that the contrary was the case, and therefore she was now ready to act one way or the other, whichever your Imperial Majesty decided, respecting the marriage proposal. This seemed to us a fair opportunity to ask her, as we did, then and there, whether in case of a favourable opportunity presenting itself, she would have courage enough to leave England by stealth. To this question of ours, the Princess, from modesty, as we presume, did at first show some reluctance to reply. Then she said that she could not say yes or no, for things might arrive at such a pitch, and the occasion for her departure from this country might become so propitious and favourable, that she would have no scruple or difficulty at all in leaving. Anyhow she would let me know her intentions on that score; for it might happen after all, that the King her father might hereafter show greater consideration for her, or cause her to be more respected and better treated than she had been until now; in which case, she would much prefer remaining in England, and conforming herself entirely to her father’s commands and wishes, obeying him implicitly and so forth, though still acting by my advice. Such was the Princess’s language in the two long conferences we held with her. In short, she begged us to present to your Majesty her most humble commendations, until she herself did so by letter.”[223]