"Can I value them, yes, can I value any of them all?" answered George William passionately. "When we will prove nothing by deeds, then we make speeches, and when we are disobedient in act, then we asseverate with words of love and reverence. Speak, then, Balthazar von Schlieben, since you have been thus commissioned by the Electoral Prince. What is this most weighty of reasons which forbids the departure of the Electoral Prince from Holland?" "Your Electoral Highness, it is debt, it is the total want of money." The Elector started up as if an adder had stung him. "Debts!" he cried in thundering voice. "Want of money! Will this litany never, never cease? What a wild, extravagant life the Electoral Prince must lead to be for ever and ever wanting money, and no sooner are his debts paid than he contracts new ones!" "Husband," said the Electress soothingly, "it does not reflect upon the life our son leads that he is out of money, but proves that he has not received a sufficiently ample allowance. Just reflect that three years ago, when he undertook this journey to Holland, you did not give him a red cent, and that I had to give him from my little savings three thousand dollars that he might be able to travel at all.[6] A considerable portion of this must have been expended during the tedious journey, with his retinue." "If any one were to listen to you, Electress, he would really suppose that the Electoral Prince had lived upon those three thousand dollars lent him by you from that time up to the present. You forget, however, that, already in the year 1636, therefore the very next year after the Electoral Prince set out upon his journey, the states at the diet of Königsberg voted the large sum of seven thousand dollars to the Electoral Prince for the prosecution of his studies, over which they made a great outcry even then, since the owner of each rood of land must be taxed five groschen to pay for these acquirements, bringing down, no doubt, many a curse upon his Latin and Greek.[7] From these two sources alone, then, he has had ten thousand dollars to disburse in three years, which for so young a gentleman would surely seem sufficient. Besides, just half a year ago, on his repeated application to me for money, I sent him again one thousand dollars, insomuch as he felt himself compelled to purchase a stately equipage." "That was the time, husband, when our son went from Leyden to Arnheim, to reside there for a long while. There, of course, he was obliged to have a small household about him, in order to maintain the dignity of his father and his house, for there, too, dwelt the Princes of Orange and Nassau, and our son, the Electoral Prince of Brandenburg, in order not to be surpassed by them, must, like them, hold his court."