Crestfallen, Walter slipped away, but half an hour later he was sitting beside the officer again, listening with eager interest to his tales. Heini Süssbacher was often in the sick chamber also, and the two boys soon determined to follow their hero out into the world to seek their fortunes. Not long after this the Captain took leave of the Councillor, with kindly thanks for his hospitality, and set out for Treves to join the Governor, who had already reached Strassburg with the Emperor. He was a considerable distance away from Basle, when suddenly the lads sprang out from the roadside and besought him to take them with him to the ducal court that they too might become soldiers like himself, promising to do their best. Heinrich Vögeli reproved them sharply; but what was he to do with them, as they absolutely refused to return home even if he sent them away? There seemed no alternative except to take them along. At the next town, therefore, he hired two horses for them, that the journey to Strassburg might be more quickly accomplished, and also despatched a messenger secretly to old Irmy to reassure him as to his son’s whereabouts.
But old Irmy was not to be appeased so easily; he stormed and grumbled continually about the runaways. “And Heini, too,” he always ended with, “that rascal! as if his father had not already injured me enough in my business by selling his goods at a loss, that he must now lead my son astray, the only child I have in the world, and induce him to become a vagabond and a traitor like that Vögeli!”
But as week after week passed and the boys did not return, the Councillor at length determined, come what might, to go in search of them; he set out also for Treves, where in a few days the Emperor Frederick, with his son Maximilian and Duke Charles the Bold, was to make his formal entry.
Chapter III
The Entry of the Princes
Irmy’s journey was not accomplished so easily as he had expected; he was frequently obliged to wait, as all the horses obtainable were needed for the use of those travellers who, as members of the Emperor’s household or as envoys or functionaries of the Empire, could claim first consideration. Nor was this a small matter, for fully seven hundred deputies from the various cities assembled at Treves to greet the Emperor, all of noble birth, not to mention the curiosity-seekers.
It was late in the evening of the twenty-ninth of September when the Councillor at last entered Treves. The Emperor had already arrived that morning, and the city was so crowded with strangers that only by paying a large sum was Irmy able to secure even the poorest kind of a lodging. Charles the Bold was expected to appear the following morning, when the Emperor was to ride out to meet him, and the people were eagerly looking forward to the coming spectacle.
“It is there I shall be most likely to find the lad,” thought Irmy. “I will rise early and go out to meet the procession; Vögeli will be with the Duke, and wherever he is, Walter will surely not be far away.”
He was the first to awake in the house the next morning; quickly rising, he peered out through the round leaded window panes, as well as their dinginess would permit, at the gray sky above. “Everything is dirty here,” he growled—“the bed and the furniture as well as the room; and these panes might be any color.”
He flung open the sash in a rage and thrust his head out into the cool morning air. Nothing was stirring as yet in the street below, and he might still have enjoyed several hours of slumber without losing anything; but anxiety for his only child had disturbed his natural serenity of mind and made him restless.
“Now I can make my way through the town easily,” he thought. He dressed himself and went carefully down the dark stairs of his lodging house, the garret of which had never before been honored by a guest of Irmy’s wealth and standing. When he reached the sidewalk he looked up once more at the dark gray sky, then took his way through the deserted streets that reëchoed to the sound of his footsteps. No one was in sight but a watchman pacing his rounds.