"Look!" continued the king, pointing towards the village and the road. "They flock out hither by thousands; but, by all the holy men! whoever disturbs the peace of the royal castle shall be chastised as he deserves. Ride to meet the throng. Count! announce my will to them--say their bishop is in my power. Every fitting proposition I will listen to; but every agitator shall instantly be banished; whoever obeys not shall be punished as a rebel."
"Now I understand you, my liege," said Count Henrik, and instantly departed.
The king's command was immediately put into execution. With great fear and dismay, the bishop and his three ecclesiastical companions beheld a troop of horsemen gallop out of the castle towards them, while a willow hedge hid the main road and the concourse of people from their sight, and they still stood close to the meadow gate, debating whether they had not acted with precipitation, and were not about to encounter a still greater danger here than that from which they had fled.
"Treachery!" cried the bishop, drawing back. "I feared it would be so. Fools that we are to trust to the generosity of an excommunicated tyrant! Now we may all fare as did Grand, and may come to rot alive in his dungeons."
"I will answer for the king's justice, even should he imprison us," said the general superior of the chapter.
"Ha! you betray me! you side with the tyrant! you counselled me to this step."
"Look, my brother!" cried the abbot of the forest monastery, pointing in dismay to the right, where but a single-fenced meadow separated them from the road and the concourse of people which now came in view. "The whole town is flocking hither. They have spied us--hear how they howl and bluster! They are springing over hedge and ditch towards us. Let us thank God and our guardian saint for the king's horsemen; it is better after all to fall into the hands of one tyrant than into those of a thousand."
At this moment the king's horsemen surrounded them, and saluted them with courtesy. "Follow us, venerable sirs," said their leader, a brisk young halberdier. "We have orders to bring you to the king's castle."
"In the name of the Lord and all the saints we accept the king's convoy!" said the bishop, looking around with uneasiness, while his cheeks glowed, and he seemed but half to trust to this unexpected safe conduct.
"The bishop! the bishop! Seize him! stone him!" shouted a whole crowd of the excited rabble, who, headed by some guild-brethren, had quitted the burgher procession, and ran, with weapons and stones in their hands, over the meadow towards the ecclesiastics.