He, the omniscient and omnipotent, had been defied and by whom?  A mere slip of a girl!  A child!  She was not even of his own race!  But perhaps it was this very defiance that made him wish for her all the more.  He loved her as he had never loved that long-dead wife, a plain princess who always thought what she was told to think.

But he would take Julie in all honor as his wife.  He could not make her a princess but he could make her a countess, and he would clothe her in a golden shower.  There had been hundreds of morganatic marriages.  They implied no disgrace.  Noblewomen themselves had been glad to make them.  And yet she had refused.  Nothing could move her.  She had not even flinched a particle when he had threatened her otherwise with death as a spy, although the threat was merely words on his lips and had no abiding place in his heart.  She was most beautiful then, when the defiant fire flashed in her dark blue eyes and the sunshine coming through a tall stained glass window made deep red tints in her wonderful golden hair.  It was maddening to think of her, just a child turning into a woman, and wholly in his power defying him as if he were some humble lieutenant and not the mighty Prince Karl of Auersperg.

He rose and walked angrily back and forth.  Now and then he went to a window and looked out at the dusky panorama of valley, mountain and shaggy forest.  As far as he could see and farther it was all his and yet he was powerless in the matter that now concerned him more than all others.  She was his prisoner, and yet she was as free as air.  Her soul and her heart were her own, and he could not reach either.  He knew it.  That knowledge like the little poisoned needle had punctured the triple-plate of his complacency and pride and left him no relief from pain, a pain that would have become intolerable had he known that of all the bars that stood between her and him the one that nothing could move was a young peasant in his employ, who watered and fed horses, and who often led them up and down the road within his plain view.

And yet knowing what he did, knowing that she would not marry him, he had no thought to give her up.  Hope will often spring anew in the face of absolute knowledge itself, and deep in his heart a belief would appear now and then that he might yet break her to his wish.  He knew that von Arnheim, Pappenheim and Kratzek knelt at the same shrine and he laughed harshly to himself because he was sure that they knelt in vain.  They were young, handsome, attractive, men of the world, men whom any girl might love but she did not love any of them.  He knew the signals, and Julie certainly hung out none for von Arnheim, nor for Kratzek nor for Pappenheim.

He ran his fingers through his great brown forked beard, just such a beard as many a robber baron might have worn, and thought deeply of what he should do with her, before the great council of princes and generals assembled in his castle.  She must not be there then.  Awkward questions might be asked, but if she were well hidden no trouble could befall.  Von Arnheim or Kratzek or Pappenheim might speak, but any words of his would outweigh all of theirs and that term of a spy was wonderfully convenient.