"Ah, you will have your jest," retorted the host of the occasion, good-naturedly. "It's bred in the bone. A quality for a soldier. Next to courage is that fine sense of humor which makes a man a bon camarade. Put down your graven image, lad; you were made to carry arms, not baubles. Put it down, I say, and touch glasses with Louis, of Pfalz-Urfeld."
"The bastard of Hochfels!" exclaimed the jester, fixedly regarding the man whose name was known throughout Europe for his reckless bravery, his personal resources and his indomitable pride or love of freedom and independence, which held him aloof from emperor or monarch, and made him peer and leader among the many intractable spirits of the Austrian country who had not yet bowed their necks to conquest; a soldier of many battles, whose thick-walled fortress, perched picturesquely in mid-air on a steep mountain top, established his security on all sides.
"The same, my friend of the motley," continued the other, not without complacency, observing the effect of his announcement on the jester.
"He who calls himself the free baron of Hochfels?" observed the fool, setting down the glass from which he had moderately partaken.
"Aye; a man of royal and peasant blood," harshly answered the free-booter. "Ambition, arrogance, are the kingly inheritance; strength, a constitution of iron, the low-born legacy. What think you of such an endowment?"
"You are far from your castle, my Lord of Hochfels," commented the jester, absently, unmindful of a question he felt not called upon to answer.
"And yet as safe as in my own mountain nest," retorted the free baron, or free-booter, indifferently. "Who would betray me? There is not a trooper of mine but would die for his master. You would not denounce me, because—but why enumerate the reasons? I hold you in the palm of my hand, and, when I close my fingers, there's the end of you."
"But where—allow me; the wine has a rare flavor," and he reached for the flask.
"Drink freely," returned the pretender; "it is the king's own, and you are my guest. You were about to ask—"
"Whence came the idea for this mad adventure?" said the jester, his eyes seemingly bent in admiration on the goblet he held; a half globe of crystal sustained by a golden Bacchus.