We shall see (QUITTE A VOIR) if Fortune will take a new thought, or if she will entirely turn her back upon me.

Happy the moment when I took to training myself in philosophy! There is nothing else that can sustain the soul in a situation like mine.

I spread out to you, dear Sister, the detail of my sorrows: if these things regarded only myself, I could stand it with composure; but I am bound Guardian of the safety and happiness of a People which has been put under my charge.

There lies the sting of it: and I shall have to reproach myself with every fault, if, by delay or by over-haste, I occasion the smallest accident; all the more as, at present, any fault may be capital.
"What a business! Here is the liberty of Germany, and that Protestant Cause for which so much blood has been shed; here are those Two great Interests again at stake; and the pinch of this huge game is such, that an unlucky quarter of an hour may establish over Germany the tyrannous domination of the House of Austria forever! I am in the case of a traveller who sees himself surrounded and ready to be assassinated by a troop of cut-throats, who intend to share his spoils.

Since the League of Cambrai [1508-1510, with a Pope in it and a Kaiser and Most Christian King, iniquitously sworn against poor Venice;--to no purpose, as happily appears], there is no example of such a Conspiracy as that infamous Triumvirate [Austria, France, Russia] now forms against me.