A Word, Only a Word Part 40

"That is my affair."

"Very well. Then we will drop courtesy and adopt a different tone."

"Nay, I am the vanquished party, and will answer you."

"Well then?"

"I had stuffs to buy."

"Are you a merchant?"

The knight shook his head and answered, smiling: "We have rebuilt our castle since the fire."

"And now you need hangings and artistic stuff. Did you expect to capture them from us?"

"Scarcely, sir."

"Then what brought you among our enemies?"

"Baron Floyon belongs to my mother's family. He marched against you, and as I approved his cause...."

"And pillage pleases you, you felt disposed to break a lance."

"Quite right."

"And you have done your cause no harm. Where do you live?"

"Surely you know: in Germany."

"Germany is a very large country."

"In the Black Forest in Swabia."

"And your name?"

The prisoner made no reply; but Ulrich fixed his eyes upon the coat of arms on the knight's armor, looked at him more steadily, and a strange smile hovered around his lips as he approached him, saying in an altered tone: "You think the Navarrete will demand from Count von Frohlinger a ransom as large as his fields and forests?"

"You know me?"

"Perhaps so, Count Lips."

"By Heavens!"

"Ah, ha, you went from the monastery to the field."

"From the monastery? How do you know that, sir?"

"We are old acquaintances, Count Lips. Look me in the eyes."

The other gazed keenly at the Eletto, shook his head, and said: "You have not seemed a total stranger to me from the first; but I never was in Spain."

"But I have been in Swabia, and at that time you did me a kindness.

Would your ransom be large enough to cover the cost of a broken church window?"

The count opened his eyes in amazement and a bright smile flashed over his face as, clapping his hands, he exclaimed with sincere delight:

"You, you--you are Ulrich! I'll be d.a.m.ned, if I'm mistaken! But who the devil would discover a child of the Black Forest in the Spanish Eletto?"

"That I am one, must remain a secret between us for the present,"

exclaimed Ulrich, extending his hand to the count. "Keep silence, and you will be free--the window will cover the ransom!"

"Holy Virgin! If all the windows in the monastery were as dear, the monks might grow fat!" cried the count. "A Swabian heart remains half Swabian, even when it beats under a Spanish doublet. Its luck, Turk's luck, that I followed Floyon;--and your old father, Adam? And Ruth--what a pleasure!"

"You ought to know... my father is dead, died long, long ago!" said Ulrich, lowering his eyes.

"Dead!" exclaimed the other. "And long ago? I saw him at the anvil three weeks since."

"My father? At the anvil? And Ruth?..." stammered Ulrich, gazing at the other with a pallid, questioning face.

"They are alive, certainly they are alive! I met him again in Antwerp.

No one else can make you such armor. The devil is in it, if you hav'nt heard of the Swabian armorer."

"The Swabian--the Swabian--is he my father?"

"Your own father. How long ago is it? Thirteen years, for I was then sixteen. That was the last time I saw him, and yet I recognized him at the first glance. True, I shall never forget the hour, when the dumb woman drew the arrow from the Jew's breast. The scene I witnessed that day in the forest still rises before my eyes, as if it were happening now."

"He lives, they did not kill him!" exclaimed the Eletto, now first beginning to rejoice over the surprising news. "Lips, man--Philipp!

I have found my mother again, and now my father too. Wait, wait! I'll speak to the lieutenant, he must take my place, and you and I will ride to Lier; there you will tell me the whole story. Holy Virgin! thanks, a thousand thanks! I shall see my father again, my father!"

It was past midnight, but the schoolmates were still sitting over their wine in a private room in the Lion at Lier. The Eletto had not grown weary of questioning, and Count Philipp willingly answered.

Ulrich now knew what death the doctor had met, and that his father had gone to Antwerp and lived there as an armorer for twelve years. The Jew's dumb wife had died of grief on the journey, but Ruth was living with the old man and kept house for him. Navarrete had often heard the Swabian and his work praised, and wore a corselet from his workshop.

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 Zen.o.bia, or chaste Lucretia of Rome! She was now past twenty and in the bloom of her beauty, but cold as gla.s.s; and though she liked him on account of his old friends.h.i.+p 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.