your Majesty with all respect and humility and humble capacity. Submitting also to the gracious consideration of your Majesty, that it is by no means from any fickleness that I now leave my native land and relations and friends, particularly at my age, being more than fifty years old and burdened with a not inconsiderable household, which I, at great inconvenience, am obliged to take abroad. And that which is still left at Hveen proves that it was not formerly my purpose and intention to depart from thence. Hoping, therefore, humbly, that when your Majesty considers these circumstances, your Majesty will be and continue my gracious Lord and King, and with all royal favour and grace incline toward me and mine. I shall always be found humbly true and dutiful to your Majesty to the best of my ability, wherever the Almighty sends me. The same good God who rules all worldly government grant your Majesty during your reign happiness, blessing, good counsel and design. Datum Rostock the 10th July 1597."
The same day Brahe wrote a letter (in Latin) to a young friend, Holger Rosenkrands (afterwards known as a writer on religious subjects), in which he thanked Rosenkrands for a letter he had just received, which showed that Ovid's words, "quam procul ex oculis, tam procul ibit amor," could not be applied to him. He had desired a painter to send a portrait of himself to Rosenkrands. He would like to know what was going on in Denmark, and what people said about his departure. He was still staying at Rostock, waiting for the return of the Danish embassy,[1] in order to speak to his brother Steen, and he had been advised by some people versed in state affairs not to apply to any foreign Government before he was assured as to the
- ↑ Probably this was an embassy to Cöln an der Spree (Berlin) in connection with the approaching marriage of the king with Anna Catharina of Brandenburg.
