permitted to work their will on the highways, but the Hapsburg, the Swiss, had pitilessly stopped their brigandage.  Now for the first time robber-knights were sentenced and their castles destroyed.  The Emperor meant to transform Germany into a sheepfold, Absbach exclaimed.  The Siebenburg brothers were his faithful allies, and though they complained that the joyous, knightly clank of arms would be silenced under such a sovereign, they themselves took care that the loud battle shouts, cries of pain, and shrieks for aid were not hushed on the roads used for traffic by the merchants.  But this was not Seitz’s sole reason for shrugging his shoulders at the expressions of the warmest sympathy which rose around him.  The Emperor was tenderly attached to Heinz Schorlin, and the man who was so kindly disposed to his foe could never be his friend.  Perhaps to-morrow Rudolph might behead his brothers and elevate Heinz Schorlin to still greater honors.  Seitz, whose eyes had overflowed with tears when the warder of his native castle lost his aged wife, who had been his nurse, now found no cause to grieve with the mourners.

So he continued his way, burdened with his own anxieties, amid the tears and lamentations of the multitude.  The numerous retinue of servants in the Eysvogel mansion were moving restlessly to and fro; the news of the prince’s death had reached them.  Herr Casper had left the house.  He was probably at Herr Ernst Ortlieb’s.  If the latter had already learned what he, Seitz Siebenburg, had said at the gaming table of his daughter, perhaps his hand had dealt the first decisive blow at the tottering house where, so long as it stood, his wife and the twins would under any circumstances find shelter.  Resentment against the Swiss, hatred, and jealousy, had made him a knave, and at the same time the most shortsighted of fools.

As he approached the second story, in which the nursery was situated and where he expected to find his wife, it suddenly seemed as if a star had risen amid the darkness.  If he poured out his heart to Isabella and let her share the terrible torture of his soul, perhaps it would awaken a tender sympathy in the woman who still loved him, and who was dearer to him than he could express.  Her jewels were certainly very valuable, but far more precious was the hope of being permitted to rest his aching head upon her breast and feel her slender white hand push back the hair from his anxious brow.  Oh, if misfortune would draw her again as near to him as during the early months of their married life and directly before it, he could rise from his depression with fresh vigour and transform the battle, now half lost, into victory.  Besides, she was clever and had power over the hearts of her family, so perhaps she might point out the pathway of escape, which his brain, unused to reflection, could not discover.

His heart throbbed high as, animated by fresh hope, he entered the corridor from which opened the rooms which he occupied with her.  But his wish to find her alone was not to be fulfilled; several voices reached him.