Eight days after the Whitsuntide of the same year, the morning twilight lit up the horizon with a dusky red, and painted with blood the walls of the Hildebrand, in which Francis was still quietly slumbering on his couch. Before him stood the old Heidenreich, who seized his hand, and called upon his name to wake him. At the call he started up wildly, and inquired peevishly and sleepily why the old man disturbed him at such an hour? "Sleep is precisely the best thing that one can enjoy in a dungeon."
"I bring you weighty, and in some sort pleasant, news. That I come with it thus early is to prepare you for the events of the morning. Yesterday arrived the emperor's final sentence--your life is saved. The imprisonment which you have already suffered will be reckoned in part of your incurred penance; and, mense Septembris anni currentis, you may expect your freedom."
"Am I to rot then so long in a dungeon? That is an unjust severity, as I neither confessed the fact, nor have been convicted of it; and one may easily see that the emperor deems himself the first nobleman in the principality, by his siding thus with the lordlings."
"Not yet contented? Thank God, on the contrary, that the sentence has turned out so exceedingly mild. I can assure you, when the sentence was read in the sessions-room, the impertinent alderman, Treutler, observed, Dat veniam corvis vexat censura columbas! You were heavily accused: had not Onophrius been silent on the rack, had not your father subdued his old pride, and made most suppliant petitions to the emperor himself, and, lastly, had I not managed your cause in a veritable masterpiece of defence, you would have had a serious business of it to-day."
"And how has it gone with the old Goldmann?" asked Francis anxiously.
"Faith," replied Heidenreich, shrugging his shoulders, "his head will be off in an hour."
"Gracious heavens!" cried Francis, starting up from his couch, "it is not possible! The old man acted only in his office; and if he did kill Bieler, his life cannot be touched for it."
"The imperial council have seen the affair in a different light," replied Heidenreich coldly. "They think his office had been to separate and arrest both parties, you as well as Rasselwitz; and not, out of partiality to the burgomaster's son, to kill his adversary."
"But I entreated you for the poor man!--and you, too, promised."
"I did to the utmost of my power whatever could be done, and as far as it could be done without your injury: your father, too, the same. Thrice did the council apply to the emperor in Goldmann's behalf, and the last time was dismissed ignominiously for their pains, and forbidden farther interference. Defendant was not to be saved. Some one must have killed Bieler: Goldmann confessed upon the rack that he had struck at the young man's head; about you he was honestly silent, and thus, therefore, devoted himself for an atonement."