"You may have them all if you like," she said; "Christopher can gather us plenty more."
He took them carefully from the child's hand, and, bowing low, rejoined his men who were in front. He then returned, said a few words to Christopher, and with his troop retired to some distance behind us, and followed us till we were close to Erfurt, when he spurred on to my father's side, and saying rapidly, "You will be safe now, and need no further convoy," once more bowed respectfully to us, and rejoining his men, we soon lost the echo of their horse-hoofs, as they galloped back through the forest.
"What did the knight say to you, Christopher?" I asked, when we dismounted at Erfurt that evening.
"He said that part of the forest was dangerous at present, because of a feud between the knights and the burghers, and if we would allow him, he would be our escort until we came in sight of Erfurt."
"That, at least, was courteous of him," I said.
"Such courtesy as a burgher may expect of a knight," rejoined Christopher, uncompromisingly; "to insult us without provocation, and then, as a favour, exempt us from their own illegal oppressions! But women are always fascinated with what men on horseback do."
"No one is fascinated with any one," I replied. For it always provokes me exceedingly when that boy talks in that way about women. And our grandmother interposed,—"Don't dispute, children; if your grandfather had not been unfortunate, you would have been of the knights' order yourselves, therefore it is not for you to run down the nobles."
"I should never have been a knight," persisted Christopher, "or a priest or a robber." But it was consolatory to my grandmother and me to consider how exalted our position would have been, had it not been for certain little unfortunate hindrances. Our grandmother never admitted my father into the pedigree.
At Leipsic we left the children, while our grandmother, our mother, Eva, and I went on foot to see Aunt Agnes at the convent of Nimptschen, whither she had been transferred, some years before, from Eisenach.
We only saw her through the convent grating. But it seemed to me as if the voice, and manner, and face were entirely unchanged since that last interview when she terrified me as a child by asking me to become a sister, and abandon Fritz.