bow so low and deferential that it was evidently remarked by those at whose approach every lady in the balconies was rising, every head in the street was bared.
A tall, thin, shrivelled, but exceedingly stately old man on a gray horse was in the centre. Clad in a purple velvet mantle, and bowing as he went, he looked truly the Kaisar, to whom stately courtesy was second nature. On one side, in black and gold, with the jewel of the Golden Fleece on his breast, rode Maximilian, responding gracefully to the salutations of the people, but his keen gray eye roving in search of the object of Sir Kasimir's salute, and lighting on Christina with such a rapid, amused glance of discovery that, in her confusion, she missed what excited Dame Johanna's rapturous admiration--the handsome boy on the Emperor's other side, a fair, plump lad, the young sovereign of the Low Countries, beautiful in feature and complexion, but lacking the fire and the loftiness that characterized his father's countenance. The train was closed by the Reitern of the Emperor's guard--steel-clad mercenaries who were looked on with no friendly eyes by the few gazers in the street who had been left behind in the general rush to keep up with the attractive part of the show.
Pageants of elaborate mythological character impeded the imperial progress at every stage, and it was full two hours ere the two youths returned, heartily weary of the lengthened ceremonial, and laughing at having actually seen the King of the Romans enduring to be conducted from shrine to shrine in the cathedral by a large proportion of its dignitaries. Ebbo was sure he had caught an archly disconsolate wink!
Ebbo had to dress for the banquet spread in the town-hall. Space was wanting for the concourse of guests, and Master Sorel had decided that the younger Baron should not be included in the invitation. Friedel pardoned him more easily than did Ebbo, who not only resented any slight to his double, but in his fits of shy pride needed the aid of his readier and brighter other self. But it might not be, and Sir Kasimir and Master Gottfried alone accompanied him, hoping that he would not look as wild as a hawk, and would do nothing to diminish the favourable impression he had made on the King of the Romans.
Late, according to mediaeval hours, was the return, and Ebbo spoke in a tone of elation. 'The Kaisar was most gracious, and the king knew me,' he said, 'and asked for thee, Friedel, saying one of us was nought without the other. But thou wilt go to-morrow, for we are to receive knighthood.'
'Already!' exclaimed Friedel, a bright glow rushing to his cheek.
'Yea,' said Ebbo. 'The Romish king said somewhat about waiting to win our spurs; but the Kaisar said I was in a position to take rank as a knight, and I thanked him, so thou shouldst share the honour.'
'The Kaisar,' said Wildschloss, 'is not the man to let a knight's fee slip between his fingers. The king would have kept off their grip, and reserved you for knighthood from his own sword under the banner of the empire; but there is no help for it now, and you must make your vassals send in their dues.'
'My vassals?' said Ebbo; 'what could they send?'
'The aid customary on the knighthood of the heir.'
'But there is--there is nothing!' said Friedel. 'They can scarce pay meal and poultry enough for our daily fare; and if we were to flay them alive, we should not get sixty groschen from the whole.'
'True enough! Knighthood must wait till we win it,' said Ebbo, gloomily.
'Nay, it is accepted,' said Wildschloss. 'The Kaisar loves his iron chest too well to let you go back. You must be ready with your round sum to the chancellor, and your spur-money and your fee to the heralds, and largess to the crowd.'
'Mother, the dowry,' said Ebbo.
'At your service, my son,' said Christina, anxious to chase the cloud from his brow.
But it was a deep haul, for the avaricious Friedrich IV. made exorbitant charges for the knighting his young nobles; and Ebbo soon saw that the improvements at home must suffer for the honours that would have been so much better won than bought.
'If your vassals cannot aid, yet may not your kinsman--?' began Wildschloss.
'No!' interrupted Ebbo, lashed up to hot indignation. 'No, sir! Rather will my mother, brother, and I ride back this very night to unfettered liberty on our mountain, without obligation to any living man.'
'Less hotly, Sir Baron,' said Master Gottfried, gravely. 'You broke in on your noble godfather, and you had not heard me speak. You and your brother are the old man's only heirs, nor do ye incur any obligation that need fret you by forestalling what would be your just right. I will see my nephews as well equipped as any young baron of them.'
The mother looked anxiously at Ebbo. He bent his head with rising colour, and said, 'Thanks, kind uncle. From YOU I have learnt to look on goodness as fatherly.'
'Only,' added Friedel, 'if the Baron's station renders knighthood fitting for him, surely I might remain his esquire.'
'Never, Friedel!' cried his brother. 'Without thee, nothing.'
'Well said, Freiherr,' said Master Sorel; 'what becomes the one becomes the other. I would not have thee left out, my Friedel, since I cannot leave thee the mysteries of my craft.'
'To-morrow!' said Friedel, gravely. 'Then must the vigil be kept to- night.'
'The boy thinks these are the days of Roland and Karl the Great,' said Wildschloss. 'He would fain watch his arms in the moonlight in the Dome Kirk! Alas! no, my Friedel! Knighthood in these days smacks more of bezants than of deeds of prowess.'
'Unbearable fellow!' cried Ebbo, when he had latched the door of the room he shared with his brother. 'First, holding up my inexperience to scorn! As though the Kaisar knew not better than he what befits me! Then trying to buy my silence and my mother's gratitude with his hateful advance of gold. As if I did not loathe him enough without! If I pay my homage, and sign the League to-morrow, it will be purely that he may not plume himself on our holding our own by sufferance, in deference to him.'
'You will sign it--you will do homage!' exclaimed Friedel. 'How rejoiced the mother will be.'
'I had rather depend at once--if depend I must--on yonder dignified Kaisar and that noble king than on our meddling kinsman,' said Ebbo. 'I shall be his equal now! Ay, and no more classed with the court Junkern I was with to-day. The dullards! No one reasonable thing know they but the chase. One had been at Florence; and when I asked him of the Baptistery and rare Giotto of whom my uncle told us, he asked if he were a knight of the Medici. All he knew was that there were ortolans at Ser Lorenzo's table; and he and the rest of them talked over wines as many and as hard to call as the roll of AEneas's comrades; and when each one must drink to her he loved best, and I said I loved none like my sweet mother, they gibed me for a simple dutiful mountaineer. Yea, and when the servants brought a bowl, I thought it was a wholesome draught of spring water after all their hot wines and fripperies. Pah!'
'The rose-water, Ebbo! No wonder they laughed! Why, the bowls for our fingers came round at the banquet here.'
'Ah! thou hast eyes for their finikin manners! Yet what know they of what we used to long for in polished life! Not one but vowed he abhorred books, and cursed Dr. Faustus for multiplying them. I may not know the taste of a stew, nor the fit of a glove, as they do, but I trust I bear a less empty brain. And the young Netherlanders that came with the Archduke were worst of all. They got together and gabbled French, and treated the German Junkern with the very same sauce with which they had served me. The Archduke laughed with them, and when the Provost addressed him, made as if he understood not, till his father heard, and thundered out, 'How now, Philip! Deaf on thy German ear? I tell thee, Herr Probst, he knows his own tongue as well as thou or I, and thou shalt hear him speak as becomes the son of an Austrian hunter.' That Romish king is a knight of knights, Friedel. I could follow him to the world's end. I wonder whether he will ever come to climb the Red Eyrie.'
'It does not seem the world's end when one is there,' said Friedel, with strange yearnings in his breast.
'Even the Dom steeple never rose to its full height,' he added, standing in the window, and gazing pensively into the summer sky. 'Oh, Ebbo! this knighthood has come very suddenly after our many dreams; and, even though its outward tokens be lowered, it is still a holy, awful thing.'
Nurtured in mountain solitude, on romance transmitted through the pure medium of his mother's mind, and his spirit untainted by contact with the world, Friedmund von Adlerstein looked on chivalry with the temper of a Percival or Galahad, and regarded it with a sacred awe. Eberhard, though treating it more as a matter of business, was like enough to his brother to enter into the force of the vows they were about to make; and if the young Barons of Adlerstein did not perform the night-watch over their armour, yet they kept a vigil that impressed their own minds as deeply, and in early morn they went to confession and mass ere the gay parts of the city were astir.
'Sweet niece,' said Master Sorel, as he saw the brothers' grave, earnest looks, 'thou hast done well by these
