It had, however, been impossible for the Prince thoroughly to infuse his own ideas on the subject of toleration into the hearts of his nearest associates.

He could not hope to inspire his deadly enemies with a deeper sympathy.

Was he not himself the mark of obloquy among the Reformers, because of his leniency to Catholics?
Nay more, was not his intimate councillor, the accomplished Saint Aldegonde, in despair because the Prince refused to exclude the Anabaptists of Holland from the rights of citizenship?
At the very moment when William was straining every nerve to unite warring sects, and to persuade men's hearts into a system by which their consciences were to be laid open to God alone--at the moment when it was most necessary for the very existence of the fatherland that Catholic and Protestant should mingle their social and political relations, it was indeed a bitter disappointment for him to see wise statesmen of his own creed unable to rise to the idea of toleration.

"The affair of the Anabaptists," wrote Saint Aldegonde, "has been renewed.

The Prince objects to exclude them from citizenship.