542; iii.

504.] by the said inheritrix of Cleve or her heirs; and on receiving that, were to consider their claims entirely fulfilled, and to cease thinking of Cleve for the future.
This Settlement, by express privilege of Kaiser Karl V., nay of Kaiser Maximilian before him, and the Laws of the Reich, Duke Wilhelm doubted not he was entitled to make; and this Settlement he made; his Lawyers writing down the terms, in their wearisome way, perhaps six times over; and struggling by all methods to guard against the least misunderstanding.

Cleve with all its appurtenances, Julich, Berg and the rest, goes to the eldest Sister and her heirs, male or female: If she have no heirs, male or female, then, but not till then, the next Sister steps into her shoes in that matter: but if she have, then, we repeat for the sixth and last time, no Sister or Sister's Representative has the least word to say to it, but takes her 100,000 pounds, and ceases thinking of Cleve.
The other three Sisters were all gradually married;--one of them to Pfalz-Neuburg, an eminent Prince, in the Bavarian region called the OBER-PFALZ (Upper Palatinate), who, or at least whose eldest Son, is much worth mentioning and remembering by us here;--and, in all these marriage-contracts, Wilhelm and his Lawyers expressed themselves to the like effect, and in the like elaborate sixfold manner: so that Wilhelm and they thought there could nowhere in the world be any doubt about it.
Shortly after signing the last of these marriage-contracts, or perhaps it was in the course of signing them, Duke Wilhelm had a stroke of palsy.

He had, before that, gone into Papistry again, poor man.

The truth is, he had repeated strokes; and being an abrupt, explosive Herr, he at last quite yielded to palsy; and sank slowly out of the world, in a cloud of semi-insanity, which lasted almost twenty years.