Friedel and I learnt at your knee, and my young ones have learnt from babyhood of the true Catholic doctrine. Yet I may not call my son's faith such as the Kaisar's Spanish conscience-keepers would have it, and so the boy must e'en tarry at home till there be work for his stout arm to do.'
'He seems little disappointed. His laugh comes ringing the loudest of all.'
'The Junker is more of a boy at two-and-twenty than I ever recollect myself! He lacks not sense nor wit, but a fray or a feast, a chase or a dance, seem to suffice him at an age when I had long been dwelling on matters of moment.'
'Thou wast left to be thine own pilot; he is but one of thy gay crew, and thus even these stirring times touch him not so deeply as thou wert affected by thine own choice in life between disorderly freedom and honourable restraint.'
'I thought of that choice to-day, mother, as I crossed the bridge and looked at the church; and more than ever thankful did I feel that our blessed Friedel, having aided me over that one decisive pass, was laid to rest, his tender spirit unvexed by the shocks and divisions that have wrenched me hither and thither.'
'Nay; not hither and thither. Ever hadst thou a resolute purpose and aim.'
'Ever failed in by my own error or that of others--What, thou nestling here, my little Vittoria, away from all yonder prattle?'
'Dear father, if I may, I love far best to hear you and the grandmother talk.'
'Hear the child! She alone hath your face, mother, or Friedel's eyes! Is it that thou wouldst be like thy noble Roman godmother, the Marchesa di Pescara, that makes thee seek our grave company, little one?'
'I always long to hear you talk of her, and of the Italian days, dear father, and how you won this noble jewel of yours.'
'Ah, child, that was before those times! It was the gift of good Kaisar Max at his godson's christening, when he filled your sweet mother with pretty spite by persuading her that it was a little golden bear-skin.'
'Tell her how you had gained it, my son.'
'By vapouring, child; and by the dull pride of my neighbours. Heard'st thou never of the siege of Padua, when we had Bayard, the best knight in Europe, and 500 Frenchmen for our allies? Our artillery had made a breach, and the Kaisar requested the French knights to lead the storm, whereto they answered, Well and good, but our German nobles must share the assault, and not leave them to fight with no better backers than the hired lanzknechts. All in reason, quoth I, and more shame for us not to have been foremost in our Kaisar's own cause; but what said the rest of our misproud chivalry? They would never condescend to climb a wall on foot in company with lanzknechts! On horseback must their worships fight, or not at all; and when to shame them I called myself a mountaineer, more used to climb than to ride, and vowed that I should esteem it an honour to follow such a knight as Bayard, were it on all fours, then cast they my burgher blood in my teeth. Never saw I the Kaisar so enraged; he swore that all the common sense in the empire was in the burgher blood, and that he would make me a knight of the noblest order in Europe to show how he esteemed it. And next morning he was gone! So ashamed was he of his own army that he rode off in the night, and sent orders to break up the siege. I could have torn my hair, for I had just lashed up a few of our nobles to a better sense of honour, and we would yet have redeemed our name! And after all, the Chapter of proud Flemings would never have admitted me had not the heralds hunted up that the Sorels were gentlemen of blood and coat armour long ago at Liege. I am glad my father lived to see that proved, mother. He could not honour thee more than he did, but he would have been sorely grieved had I been rejected. He often thought me a mechanical burgher, as it was.'
'Not quite so, my son. He never failed to be proud of thy deeds, even when he did not understand them; but this, and the grandson's birth, were the crowning joys of his life.'
'Yes, those were glad triumphant years, take them all in all, ere the Emperor sent me to act ambassador in Rome, and we left you the two elder little girls and the boy to take care of. My dear little Thekla! She had a foreboding that she might never see those children more, yet would she have pined her heart away more surely had I left her at home! I never was absent a week but I found her wasted with watching for me.'
'It was those weary seven years of Italy that changed thee most, my son.'
'Apart from you, mother, and knowing you now indeed to be widowed, and with on the one hand such contradictory commands from the Emperor as made me sorely ashamed of myself, of my nation, and of the man whom I loved and esteemed personally the most on earth, yet bound there by his express command, while I saw my tender wife's health wasting in the climate day by day! Yet still, while most she gasped for a breath of Swabian hills, she ever declared it would kill her outright to send her from me. And thus it went on till I laid her in the stately church of her own patroness. Then how it would have fared with me and the helpless little ones I know not, but for thy noble godmother, my Vittoria, the wise and ready helper of all in trouble, the only friend thy mother had made at Rome, and who had been able, from all her heights of learning and accomplishment, to value my Thekla's golden soul in its simplicity. Even then, when too late, came one of the Kaisar's kindest letters, recalling me,--a letter whose every word I would have paid for with a drop of my own blood six weeks before! and which he had only failed to send because his head was running on the plan of that gorgeous tomb where he is not buried! Well, at least it brought us home to you again once more, mother, and, where you are, comfort never has been utterly absent from me. And then, coming from the wilful gloom of Pope Leo's court into our Germany, streamed over by the rays of Luther's light, it was as if a new world of hope were dawning, as if truth would no longer be muffled, and the young would grow up to a world far better and purer than the old had ever seen. What trumpet-calls those were, and how welcome was the voice of the true Catholic faith no longer stifled! And my dear old Kaisar, with his clear eyes, his unfettered mind--he felt the power and truth of those theses. He bade the Elector of Saxony well to guard the monk Luther as a treasure. Ah! had he been a younger man, or had he been more firm and resolute, able to act as well as think for himself, things might have gone otherwise with the Church. He could think, but could not act; and now we have a man who acts, but WILL not think. It may have been a good day for our German reputation among foreign princes when Charles V. put on the crown; but only two days in my life have been as mournful to me as that when I stood by Kaisar Max's death-bed at Wells, and knew that generous, loving, fitful spirit was passing away from the earth! Never owned I friend I loved so well as Kaisar Max! Nor has any Emperor done so much for this our dear land.'
'The young Emperor never loved thee.'
'He might have treated me as one who could be useful, but he never forgave me for shaking hands with Luther at the Diet of Worms. I knew it was all over with my court favour after I had joined in escorting the Doctor out of the city. And the next thing was that Georg of Freundsberg and his friends proclaimed me a bigoted Papist because I did my utmost to keep my troop out of the devil's holiday at the sack of Rome! It has ever been my lot to be in disgrace with one side or the other! Here is my daughter's marriage hindered on the one hand, my son's promotion checked on the other, because I have a conscience of my own, and not of other people's! Heaven knows the right is no easy matter to find; but, when one thinks one sees it, there is nothing to be done but to guide oneself by it, even if the rest of the world will not view it in the same light.'
'Nothing else! I doubt me whether it be ever easy to see the veritably right course while still struggling in the midst. That is for after ages, which behold things afar off; but each man must needs follow his own principle in an honest and good heart, and assuredly God will guide him to work out some good end, or hinder some evil one.'
'Ay, mother. Each party may guard one side or other of the truth in all honesty and faithfulness; he who cannot with his whole heart cast in his lot with either,--he is apt to serve no purpose, and to be scorned.'
'Nay, Ebbo, may he not be a witness to the higher and more perfect truth than either party have conceived? Nor is inaction always needful. That which is right towards either side still reveals itself at the due moment, whether it be to act or to hold still. And verily, Ebbo, what thou didst say even now has set me on a strange thought of mine own dream, that which heralded the birth of thyself and thy brother. As thou knowest, it seemed to me that I was watching two sparkles from the extinguished Needfire wheel. One rose aloft and shone as a star!'
'My guiding-star!'
'The other fulfilled those words of the Wise Man. It shone and ran to and fro in the grass. And surely, my Ebbo, thy mother may feel that, in all these dark days of perplexity and trial, the spark of light hath ever shone and drawn its trail of brightness in the gloom, even though the way was long, and seemed uncertain.'
'The mother who ever fondled me WILL think so, it may be! But, ah! she had better pray that the light be clearer, and that I may not fall utterly short of the star!'
