The very next year he stood in the place of his father who fell at Ascalon, deeply lamented.

The arduous labour imposed by the management of his own great possessions, and the ceaseless endeavour to enlarge them, in accordance with the dead man’s wishes, gave him no time to cherish the longing for the peace of the cloister.

After his election as King of Germany, which had long been neglected under the government of sham emperors, increased the burden of his duties the more seriously he took them, and the more difficult the Bohemian king Ottocar, especially, rendered it for him to maintain the crown he had won, the more eagerly he strove, particularly after the victory of Marchfield had secured his sovereignty, to increase the power of his house.

A binding duty, a difficult task, must also withhold Heinz Schorlin from the wish for whose fulfilment his fiery young soul now fervently longed, and which he knew was receiving powerful sustenance from a worthy and eloquent Minorite.

Rudolph’s own brother had died in peace as canon of Basel and Strasbourg; his sister was happy in her convent as a modest Dominican; but the young knight over whose welfare he had promised his mother to watch, and whom he loved, was not fitted for the monastic life.

However earnest might be his intention—­after the miracle which seemed to have been wrought specially for him—­of renouncing the world, sooner or later the time must come when Heinz would long to return to it and the profession of arms, for which he was born and reared.  But if he could not be deterred from entering the modest order of the mendicant monks, who proudly called poverty their beloved bride, and should become the head of a bishopric while young, he would inevitably be one of those fighting prelates who seemed to the Emperor—­who disliked halfway measures—­neither knight nor priest, and with whom he had had many a quarrel.

Opposition would merely have sharpened the young knight’s desire; therefore his imperial patron had treated him as if he were ignorant of what was passing in his mind.  Without circumlocution, he commanded him, at the head of several bodies of Frank, Swabian, and Swiss troopers, whom he placed at his orders, to attack the brothers Siebenburg and their allies, and destroy their castle.  If possible, he was to bring them alive before the imperial judgment seat, and recover for the Eysvogels the merchandise of which they had been robbed.

When Heinz, after the Emperor Rudolph had mentioned the latter name, earnestly entreated him to prevent Wolff’s persecution, the sovereign promised to fulfil the wish as soon as the proper time came.  He himself desired to be gracious to the brave champion of Marchfield, who under great irritation had drawn his sword.  But when Heinz also asked the Emperor to send his friend Count Gleichen with him, the request was refused.  He must have the entire responsibility of the expedition which he commanded; for nothing except an important duty that no one would help him bear, gave promise of making him forget everything that usually engrossed his attention, and thus his new object of longing.  Besides, if he returned victorious his fame and reward would be undivided.