The count could tell him a great deal about Ruth.  He acknowledged that he had not sought Adam the Swabian for weapons, but on account of his beautiful daughter.  The girl was slender as a fir-tree!  And her face! once seen could never be forgotten.  So might have looked the beautiful Judith, who slew Holophernes, or Queen Zenobia, or chaste Lucretia of Rome!  She was now past twenty and in the bloom of her beauty, but cold as glass; and though she liked him on account of his old friendship for Ulrich and the affair in the forest, he was only permitted to look at, not touch her.  She would rejoice when she heard that Ulrich was still alive, and what he had become.  And the smith, the smith!  Nay, he would not go home now, but back to Antwerp to be Ulrich’s messenger!  But now he too would like to relate his own experiences.

He did so, but in a rapid, superficial way, for the Eletto constantly reverted to old days and his father.  Every person whom they had both known was enquired for.

Old Count Frohlinger was still alive, but suffered a great deal from gout and the capricious young wife he had married in his old age.  Hangemarx had grown melancholy and, after all, ended his life by the rope, though by his own hand.  Dark-skinned Xaver had entered the priesthood and was living in Rome in high esteem, as a member of a Spanish order.  The abbot still presided over the monastery and had a great deal of time for his studies; for the school had been broken up and, as part of the property of the monastery had been confiscated, the number of monks had diminished.  The magistrate had been falsely accused of embezzling minors’ money, remained in prison for a year and, after his liberation, died of a liver complaint.

Morning was dawning when the friends separated.  Count Philipp undertook to tell Ruth that Ulrich had found his mother again.  She was to persuade the smith to forgive his wife, with whose praises her son’s lips were overflowing.

At his departure Philipp tried to induce the Eletto to change his course betimes, for he was following a dangerous path; but Ulrich laughed in his face, exclaiming:  “You know I have found the right word, and shall use it to the end.  You were born to power in a small way; I have won mine myself, and shall not rest until I am permitted to exercise it on a great scale, nay, the grandest.  If aught on earth affords a taste of heavenly joy, it is power!”

In the camp the Eletto found the troops from Aalst prepared for departure, and as he rode along the road saw in imagination, sometimes his parents, his parents in a new and happy union, sometimes Ruth in the full splendor of her majestic beauty.  He remembered how proudly he had watched his father and mother, when they went to church together on Sunday, how he had carried Ruth in his arms on their flight; and now he was to see and experience all this again.

He gave his men only a short rest, for he longed to reach his mother.  It was a glorious return home, to bring such tidings!  How beautiful and charming he found life; how greatly he praised his destiny!