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Page 28
"A noble duke," replied the lady, "whose name is heard wherever the
minstrel tunes his harp, whose word was never plighted in vain, whose
sword was never stained in an unrighteous cause, whose arm and purse are
ever at the command of the poor and persecuted, whose courage and
clemency, wisdom and piety, so well entitle him to the love of all his
people, is not so easily forgotten."
"I assure you, on my honor," exclaimed Rodolph, "that I value your words
more than all the songs of all the minstrels I ever heard. I would I
were worthy your praise; but you have inspired me to deserve it.
Farewell! I see that Henry is impatient, and we must not lose the early
morning."
He bade adieu to the baron and his daughter, and turned to mount his
horse, when Bertha touched his arm, and placed in his hand something
enveloped in silk. Bertha said not one word, but she looked earnestly up
in Rodolph's face, and then walked away as swiftly and silently as she
came. The duke could not help remarking the wild beauty of her pale and
wasted face, and remained some moments gazing after her with a painful
interest. He removed the silk and found that it contained a ring
garnished with a stone of rare value. He started as his eye fell upon
the trinket, for he remembered that years ago he had given it to the
Lord of Hers. How could it have come into Bertha's possession, was the
question that naturally occurred to him; but the answer came not so
readily as the question. While the duke was thus pondering, Henry had
embraced his father and sister, and leaped upon his horse. Rodolph
mounted slowly, after examining the girths with his own hand; and the
little troop, waving a parting salute, swept over the drawbridge, and
were soon lost among the trees.
About the same hour, or a little earlier, the Lord of Hers, with a small
retinue, had set out in an opposite direction, but on the same mission.
Rodolph had long seen that King Henry's unprincipled ambition threatened
the liberties of religion and of Austria, and he only paused for the
Papal excommunication to throw off all allegiance to a monarch who could
not be safely trusted. That excommunication was impending, and, as may
be easily conjectured, the duke was making a rapid circuit of his
dominions, to unite his barons more closely to his interests; to warn
them to prepare for the approaching struggle; to confirm the weak and
wavering in their fidelity; inspire the resolves of those who were true
and firm, and make all the pulses of the circle of Suabia throb in
concert to the action of one grand moving power. To gain time, the Lord
of Hers had been despatched to the provinces bordering upon the Rhine
with letters from Rodolph to the principal barons there, while the duke
himself, with Henry of Stramen, followed the Danube.
For many months there had been no active warfare between the hostile
houses, though the feud had lost none of its venom. But age was
stiffening the impetuosity of the old barons; and their sons, no longer
urged on by the battle-cry of their sires, listened with more attention
to the advice and representations of their spiritual instructors.
Gilbert of Hers was not inclined to take an injury to his breast, and
hug it there; but the bold and frequent incursions of Henry of Stramen
had induced him to retaliate rather in a spirit of rivalry than of
revenge. Henry of Stramen inherited all his father's implacability, but
he had often yielded to his sister's solicitation to dedicate to the
chase the day he had devoted to a descent upon the lordship of Hers. The
troubled condition of Germany had also diverted the chiefs from the
disputes of their firesides to the civil wars of the empire; and neither
the Lord of Hers nor the Baron of Stramen gave much attention to aught
else than the league that Rodolph was forming against Henry IV of the
house of Franconia.
Gilbert, left almost without a companion--for the good priest Herman,
whose time was divided between his pastoral duties, his prayers, and his
studies, saw him but at intervals--found time to hang very heavily upon
his hands. He thought the old reaper weary and sluggish, for the scythe
flies fast only when we employ or enjoy the moments. The autumn blast
was beginning to lend a thousand bright colors to the trees, and the
giddy leaves, like giddy mortals, threw off their simple green for the
gaudy livery that was but a prelude to their fall--for the beauty that,
like the dying note of the swan, was but the beauty of death. It was the
season of all others for the chase, that health-giving but dangerous
pastime, which our ancestors pursued with almost incredible eagerness,
hunting the stag or the boar, over hill and dale, bog and jungle,
through every twist and turn, as their Anglo-Saxon descendants now
pursue the flying dollar.
But Gilbert often declined the invitation of the forester to fly the
falcon, rarely indulging in his favorite amusement. He preferred to
wander along the borders of the magnificent Lake of Constance, or to
loiter among the neighboring hills, and watch, from some bare peak, the
broad-winged vulture sailing slowly and steadily through the skies. He
would watch it until it became a mere speck in the blue distance: we may
often catch ourselves gazing after receding objects as though they were
bearing away a thought we had fixed upon them. His wound was nearly
well, and the freshness of health was again in his cheeks; but his
spirit had lost a part of its sprightliness, and he seemed to have grown
older. He did not evince his former relish for the manuscripts of
Herman, but his visits to the chapel were more frequent and lasted
longer. Thus, day after day, he would study the lake, the clouds, and
the cliffs, neither fearing an attack from the men of Stramen, nor
meditating one against them.
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