Young Count Lips stepped boldly forward, saying beseechingly: 

“I did it, Father—­unintentionally!  Forgive me!”

“You?” asked the monk, his voice growing lower and more gentle, as he continued:  “Folly and wantonness without end!  When will you learn discretion, Count Philipp?  But as you did it unintentionally, I will let it pass for to-day.”

With these words, the monk left the court-yard; and as soon as the gate had closed behind him, Ulrich approached his generous companion, and said in a tone that only he could hear, yet grateful to the inmost depths of his heart: 

“I will repay you some day.”

“Nonsense!” laughed the young count, throwing his arm over the shoulder of the artisan’s son.  “If the glass wouldn’t rattle, I would throw now; but there’s another day coming to-morrow.”

CHAPTER VII.

Autumn had come.  The yellow leaves were fluttering about the school play-ground, the starlings were gathering in flocks on the church roof to take their departure, and Ulrich would fain have gone with them, no matter where.  He could not feel at home in the monastery and among his companions.  Always first in Richtberg, he was rarely so here, most seldom of all in school, for his father had forbidden the doctor to teach him Latin, so in that study he was last of all.

Often, when every one was asleep, the poor lad sat studying by the ever-burning lamp in the lobby, but in vain.  He could not come up with the others, and the unpleasant feeling of remaining behind, in spite of the most honest effort, spoiled his life and made him irritable.

His comrades did not spare him, and when they called him “horse-boy,” because he was often obliged to help Pater Benedictus in bringing refractory horses to reason, he flew into a rage and used his superior strength.

He stood on the worst terms of all with black-haired Xaver, to whom he owed the nickname.

This boy’s father was the chief magistrate of the little city, and was allowed to take his son home with him at Michaelmas.

When the black-haired lad returned, he had many things to tell, gathered from half-understood rumor, about Ulrich’s parents.  Words were now uttered, that brought the blood to Ulrich’s cheeks, yet he intentionally pretended not to hear them, because he dared not contradict tales that might be true.  He well knew who had brought all these stories to the others, and answered Xaver’s malicious spite with open enmity.

Count Lips did not trouble himself about any of these things, but remained Ulrich’s most intimate friend, and was fond of going with him to see the horses.  His vivacious intellect joyously sympathized with the smith’s son, when he told him about Ruth’s imaginary visions, and often in the play-ground he went apart with Ulrich from their companions; but this very circumstance was a thing that many, who had formerly been on more intimate terms with the aristocratic boy, were not disposed to forgive the new-comer.