--gave rise to tremendous
orgies. Count Schwartzburg, the Prince's brother-in-law, and one of the
negotiators of the marriage, found many occasions to strengthen the bonds
of harmony between the countries by indulgence of these common tastes. "I
have had many princes and counts at my table," he wrote to Orange, "where
a good deal more was drunk than eaten. The Rhinegrave's brother fell down
dead after drinking too much malvoisie; but we have had him balsamed and
sent home to his family."

These disorders among the higher ranks were in reality so extensive as to
justify the biting remark of the Venetian: "The gentlemen intoxicate
themselves every day," said he, "and the ladies also; but much less than
the men." His remarks as to the morality, in other respects, of both
sexes were equally sweeping, and not more complimentary.

If these were the characteristics of the most distinguished society, it
may be supposed that they were reproduced with more or less intensity
throughout all the more remote but concentric circles of life, as far as
the seductive splendor of the court could radiate. The lesser nobles
emulated the grandees, and vied with each other in splendid
establishments, banquets, masquerades, and equipages. The natural
consequences of such extravagance followed. Their estates were mortgaged,
deeply and more deeply; then, after a few years, sold to the merchants,
or rich advocates and other gentlemen of the robe, to whom they had been
pledged. The more closely ruin stared the victims in the face, the more
heedlessly did they plunge into excesses. "Such were the circumstances,"
moralizes a Catholic writer, "to which, at an earlier period, the affairs
of Catiline, Cethegus, Lentulus, and others of that faction had been
reduced, when they undertook to overthrow the Roman republic." Many of
the nobles being thus embarrassed, and some even desperate, in their
condition, it was thought that they were desirous of creating
disturbances in the commonwealth, that the payment of just debts might be
avoided, that their mortgaged lands might be wrested by main force from
the low-born individuals who had become possessed of them, that, in
particular, the rich abbey lands held by idle priests might be
appropriated to the use of impoverished gentlemen who could turn them to
so much better account. It is quite probable that interested motives such
as these were not entirely inactive among a comparatively small class of
gentlemen