Meanwhile Roland remained deplorably ignorant regarding affairs of State, this being a subject of which his mother knew nothing.  The Emperor, who should have been his son’s natural teacher, gave his whole attention to the wine-flagon, letting affairs drift towards disaster, allowing the power that deserted his trembling fingers to be grasped by stronger but unauthorized hands.  Roland’s surreptitious excursions into the city to confer with the sword makers taught him little of politics, for his conversations with these mechanics were devoted entirely to metal-working.  He was hustled now and again by the turbulent mob, in going to and fro, but he did not know why it clamored, and, indeed, took little interest in the matter, conscious only that he came more and more to hate the city and loathe its inhabitants.  When he could have his own way, he said to himself, he would retire to some country castle which his father owned, and there devote himself to such employment as fell in with his wishes.

But he was to receive a sharp lesson that no man, however highly placed, is independent of his fellows.  He was unaware of the commotion that arose round his own name, and of the grim hanging of the leaders who chose him as their supreme head.  When, bewildered and sleepy, he was aroused at midnight, and saw three armed men standing by his bedside, he received a shock that did more to awaken him than the grip of alien hands on his shoulders.  During that night ride in the boat he said nothing but thought much.  He had heard his mother plead for him without for a moment delaying his departure.  She, evidently, was powerless.  There was then in the land a force superior to that of the Throne.  Something that had been said quieted his mother’s fears, for at last she allowed him to go without further protest, but weeping a little, and embracing him much.  There was no roughness or rudeness on the part of those who conveyed him down the river Main, and finally along the Rhine to Ehrenfels, but rather the utmost courtesy and deference, yet Roland remained silent throughout the long journey, agitated by this new, invisible, irresistible sovereignty animated with the will and power to do what it liked with him.

At the Castle of Ehrenfels he found awaiting him no rigorous imprisonment.  He was treated as a welcome guest of an invisible host.  It was his conversations with the garrulous custodian, who was a shrewd observer of the passing show, that gradually awakened the young Prince to some familiarity with the affairs of the country.  He learned now in what a deplorable state the capital stood, through the ever-increasing exactions of the robber Barons along the Rhine.  He asked his instructor why the merchants did not send their goods by some other route, which was a very natural query, but was told there existed no other route.  A great forest extended for the most part between Frankfort and Cologne, and through the wilderness were no roads, for even those constructed by the Romans had been allowed to fall into decay; overgrown with trees, Nature thus destroying the neglected handiwork of man; the forest reclaiming its own.