“I am a country girl, please to remember,” said the Countess.  “I know nothing of Frankfort, or, indeed, of any other large town.”

“I am glad of that, for there is much to see in Frankfort.  We will make for the Cathedral, that beautiful red building, splendid and grand, where we should have been married with great and useless ceremony if I had been crowned Emperor.  But I am sure the simple chapel in the working town of Sachsenhausen better suits a sword maker and his bride.”

Now they came out into the busy street, which seemed more thronged than ever.  In making their way to the Cathedral, the mob became so dense that progression was difficult.  The current seemed setting in one direction, and it carried them along with it.  Hildegunde took the young man’s arm, and clung close to him.

“They are driving us, whether we will or no, towards our old enemy, the Archbishop of Mayence.  That is his Palace facing the square.  There is some sort of demonstration going on,” cried Roland, as cheer after cheer ascended to the heavens.  “How grim and silent the Palace appears, all shuttered as if it were a house of the dead!  Somehow it reminds me of Mayence himself.  I had pictured him occupying a house of gloom like that.”

“Do you think we are in any danger?” asked the girl.  “The people seem very boisterous.”

“Oh, no danger at all.  This mob is in the greatest good-humor.  Listen to their heart-stirring cheers!  The people have been fed; that is the reason of it.”

“Is that why they cheer?  It sounds to me like an ovation to the Archbishop!  Listen to them:  ’Long live Mayence!  God bless the Archbishop!’ There is no terror in those shouts.”

Nevertheless his Lordship of Mayence had taken every precaution.  The shutters of his Palace were tightly closed, and along the whole front of the edifice a double line of soldiers was ranged under the silent command of their officers.  They stood still and stiffly as stone-graven statues in front of a Cathedral.  The cheers rang unceasingly.  Then, suddenly, as if the sinister Palace opened one eye, shutters were turned away from a great window giving upon the portico above the door.  The window itself was then thrown wide.  Cheering ceased, and in the new silence, from out the darkness there stepped with great dignity an old man, gorgeous in his long robes of office, and surmounting that splendid intellectual head rested the mitered hat of an Archbishop.  After the momentary silence the cheers seemed to storm the very door of the sky itself, but the old man moved no muscle, and no color tinged his wan face.

“By the Kings,” whispered Roland, during a temporary lull, “what a man!  There stands power embodied, and yet I venture ’tis his first taste of popularity.  I am glad we have seen this sight, both mob and master.  How quick are the people to understand who is the real ruler of Germany!  I wish he were my friend!”