Mechanically Charles replaced his blade. "Yea; better a kingdom lost," he muttered, "than a broken vow."
Yet, after so many battles won in the field and Diet; after titanic contests with kings in Christendom, and Solyman in the east, to fall, by the mockery of fate, into the grasp of a thieving mountain rifler—
"Ambition! power! we sow but the sand," whispered satiety.
"Vainglory is a sleeveless errand," murmured the spirit of the flagellant.
Yet he gazed half-fiercely at his priestly adviser, when suddenly his gloomy eye brightened; the inutility of ambition was forgotten; unconsciously he clasped the arm of the joculatrix, who had drawn near. His grip was like a gauntlet; even in her tense, strained mood she winced.
"The fight is not yet lost!" he exclaimed. As he spoke the figure of a knight, fully armed, who had made his way through the avenue of tents, was seen swiftly descending the hill. Upon his strong Arabian steed, the rider's appearance and bearing signaled him as a soldier apart from the rank and file of the guard. His coat-of-arms, that of the house of Friedwald, was richly emblazoned upon the housings of his courser. Whence had he come? The attendants and equerries had not seen him in the camp. Only the taciturn armorer of Friedwald looked complacently after him, stroking his great beard, as one well satisfied. As this late-comer approached the scene of strife the flanks of the guard were wavering yet more perilously.
"A miracle, Sire!" cried the prelate.
"But one that partakes more of earth than Heaven," retorted Charles, with ready irony.
"Who is he, Sire?" breathlessly asked the young girl. At her feet whimpered the blue-eyed page, holding to her skirt, all his courage gone.
But ere he could answer—if he had seen fit to do so—from below, out of the vortex, came the clamorous shouts: