“Are not members of the nobility privileged in this matter?”

“They cannot be, for the State is greater than any individual.”

“I shall make a note of that, my Lord of Cologne.  I believe you are in the right, and I hope so.  During my lonely incarceration,” the Prince laughed a little, “I have studied the condition of the State, arriving at the conclusion that the greatest traitors in our land are the three Archbishops, who, arrogating to themselves power that should belong to the Crown, did not use that power for suppressing those other treason-mongers, the Barons of the Rhine.”

“What would you have us do with them?”

“You should disarm them.  You should exact restitution of their illegally-won wealth.  You should open the Rhine to honest commerce.”

“That is easy to enunciate, and difficult to perform.  If the Castles were disarmed, especially those on the left bank, a great injustice would be done that might lead to the extinction of many noble families.  Why, the forests of Germany are filled with desperate outlaws, who respect neither life nor property.  I myself have suffered but recently from their depredations.  In broad daylight an irresistible band of these ruffians descended upon and captured the supposed impregnable Castle of Rheinstein, shamefully maltreating Baron Hugo von Hohenfels, tying him motionless, and nearly strangling him with stout ropes, after which the scoundrels robbed him of every stiver he possessed.  The following midnight but one they descended on Furstenberg, a fief of my own, and not contenting themselves with robbery, brought red ruin on the Margrave by burning his Castle to the ground.”

“My Lord, red ruin and the Red Margrave were made for each other.  It was the justice of God that they should meet.”  The young man raised aloft his swordarm, shaking his clenched fist at the sky.  “That hand held the torch that fired Furstenberg.  The Castle was taken and burned by three sword makers from Frankfort, who never saw the Hunsruck or the outlaws thereof.”

The Archbishop reined in his horse, and looked at the excited young man with amazement.

“You fired Furstenberg?”

“Yes; and effectively, my Lord.  I shall rebuild it for you, but the Red Margrave I shall hang, as my predecessor Rudolph did his ancestor.”

An expression of sternness hardened the Archbishop’s face.

“Sir,” he said, “I regret to hear you speak like this, and your safety lies in the fact that I do not believe a word of it.  Even so, such wild words fill me with displeasure.  I beg to remind you that the Election of an Emperor has not yet taken place, and I, for one, am likely to reconsider my decision.  Still, as I said, I do not believe a word of your absurd tale.”

“I believe every syllable of it!” cried the Countess with enthusiasm, “and glory that there is a mind brave enough, and a hand obedient to it, to smoke out a robber and a murderer.”