'What is the matter?' asked the captain, addressing himself to the wounded man. 'How dare you thus disturb me while at table?'
'By your leave, captain!' said the apprentice, with confidence; 'your sergeant has robbed me of all the money I had about me, and then beat me over the head with his sword because I had no more to give him. It was proper that I should complain to you in order that you might take measures to punish the outrage.'
'You did not know how to behave yourself properly, my son,' said the captain. 'My people are always kind and harmless as children to all who are complaisant towards them, and give them every thing they desire. Go and have your wound dressed, and be more careful another time.'
'Is that all the satisfaction I am to get for my injuries?' asked the apprentice, irritated by the pain of his wound, and still more by the captain's contemptuous answer.
The captain's eyes flashed like two baneful meteors. 'Satisfaction!--injuries! How dare you, a damned heretic, use such words in my presence? vociferated he, starting from his seat. You ought to thank God that my sergeant did not cleave your head asunder. Pack yourself hence, if you do not wish that I should complete the work he began.'
He grasped his sword, the young man sprang beyond his reach, and Katharine, in soft and soothing tones, besought the savage to be pacified; but the last link of the chain, by which his natural brutality had hitherto been restrained, was now broken; the wild beast in human form was let loose, and yielded only to the most savage impulses.
'Do you suppose, vagabonds,' roared the fiend, 'that we have come here to keep strict discipline and to wait quietly for what you may please to dispense to us? We are come to chastise you for your heresy, which is a revolt alike against God and the emperor. We are come to convert you to the true faith; and if your stubbornness will not suffer our object to be accomplished by fair means, you are given over to us as a prize, with your property and lives, bodies and souls, to be tormented by us to our heart's content, until you are brought to repentance and an abandonment of your abominable opinions, or sink in despair.'
'No, captain,' cried Fessel, with manly firmness; 'that is not the will of our emperor, and I should consider it treasonable to believe your scandalous assertions. Nor was that the condition upon which we admitted you within our walls. From your colonel's own mouth have I heard quite a different speech, and I shall go and ask him if he is about to give the lie to his own words.'
'First go to your own chamber as an arrested prisoner,' said the captain, with a smile of contempt; 'until I have had you tried for your rebellious speech. Lead him forth!' commanded he to the guards. 'Lock him up, watch him sharply, and if he attempts to escape shoot him down.'
'Eternal justice, judge and avenge!' cried Fessel, as the soldiers dragged him away.