“My son,” began the Elector, “I learn from Schwarzenberg that you have sent back a message of the Berlinese. I understand you, my son, and declare to you now that I would gladly listen to any suggestion from you bearing upon the welfare of the country. It is time, my son, for you to live here, that you may become acquainted with the hard duties of ruling a country. Who knows whether the Almighty may not soon call me hence? I long for the rest, for I am tired, so tired! Come here, my son, and sit by my side, for I would speak with you from the bottom of my heart. And you too, dearest wife, who have shared joys and sorrows with me,—there have not been many joys,—sit at my side and be a witness to the words I shall speak to the future ruler of this country. Give me your hands! “My son, for more than twenty years the war has raged between Catholics and Protestants, and there is not a country in Europe which has suffered as much as our own possessions, Brandenburg, Prussia, and Cleves. My son, I will look calmly back upon my life and try to speak without prejudice. I have turned my attention from worldly to eternal matters. Why should I seek worldly glory, I, who am so soon to stand before the judgment seat of God? Had I had the heroic character of Gustavus Adolphus, surely, surely things might have been different. But it would have been difficult even for him, whose devoted courage led him to his death, to be a soldier as well as a Brandenburg prince; for the very things necessary to a soldier’s success—a full treasury, and a great, valiant army—would have been lacking. “Many will say, ‘Why could they not have been secured?’ My son, glance with me at my life and then decide. Difficulties were piled upon difficulties. I could hardly move, there were so many obstacles in my way. (Had it not been for you, dear wife, I should long ago have been only dust and ashes. You were my stay and staff.) Almost everything which happened to our house so weighed down my soul that it was not possible to rise above it. I had to secure your safety and education far away from me. You know what happened to your mother’s brother. Shortly afterwards the Emperor’s ban stripped one of my father’s uncles, Duke Johann George, of his dukedom, and me and my house of all claims upon it. Then another brother of my father, Margrave Christian Wilhelm, administrator of the Archbishopric of Magdeburg, was outlawed and driven from his country and people. My brother, Joachim Sigismund, whom I appointed before Schwarzenberg as Minister of Brandenburg, escaped only by his courage from death by fire, and died at a time when he was most needed. Then my usually excellent mother still further increased my troubles by helping to aggravate the bitterness of the Lutherans against the Reformers. You will agree with me, my son, that such things are not calculated to fill the heart with fresh courage.