"The transference of the government? That means an insurrection, a revolution. They would hurl me from my throne and ensconce my son there?" "They hope that in your distress you will do, gracious sir, what your blessed father did." "Abdicate!" cried the Elector angrily. "Abdicate in favor of my son?" "In favor of the Electoral Prince, who has grown up in Holland to become a promising Prince, a general of the future, a brilliant leader of the Protestant Church, and of whom his followers say that he will be a second Gustavus Adolphus!" "A second plague--a second source of danger to myself!" screamed the Elector, striking with his clinched fist upon the arm of his chair. "It was not enough that my brother-in-law Gustavus Adolphus brought me into trouble and distress, and caused the Emperor's wrath to flame forth against me, so that I was really afraid that I would share the fate of my cousin the Margrave of Jägerndorf, whom the Emperor put under his ban, declaring that he had forfeited his margraviate, and giving it over as a feudal tenure to Prince Liechstenstein! I was only saved then from a like terrible fate by your intercession and fidelity! It was you who, by your address and eloquence, softened the Emperor's resentment against me, induced him to pardon me, and afterward brought about the peace of Prague, which reconciled the Emperor to me. Yet it was not enough to have gone through those times of anxiety and distress, they must be now renewed through my only son! In him am I to find a second Gustavus Adolphus, to plunge me into new perils and bring down upon me the Emperor's avenging wrath? But it shall not be--I solemnly swear, it shall not be! I will _not_ involve my land in new dangers and calamities of war. I will _not_ depart from my neutrality. I _will_ have peace--peace with the Emperor, peace for my poor people, and for their unhappy Prince! But I shall not act as my father did, and prepare a pleasure for my son by resigning sovereignty and rule in my lifetime and becoming the servant and subject of my own son! Before me shall he bow--me shall he acknowledge to be his lord so long as I live, and never while I breathe shall I cease to lay to his charge these hours of pain and vexation. I am Elector and ruler, and he is nothing further than my son and subject, my successor when I die, but not my coregent while I live! Count Adam Schwarzenberg, I charge you to stand courageously at my side, to remain zealous in my service, and to direct your attention especially to unraveling all the arts and wiles, the plots and schemes of my son and his abettors; to give me always information on these points, to keep nothing in the background, and not to conceal anything from me merely to save me from vexation. Will you promise and swear so to manage and act, my Adam?"