"England will not see me for many a year, my lord," answered Algernon Grey; "but I can make my arrangements better elsewhere than here. I will be ready to accompany your Majesty on the day named. My followers can join me at Prague; and though you may not see me till the very day, do not doubt of my coming, I beseech you."
"I will not," said the Elector, earnestly; "I will not. When such a man has given his word, it is better than the bond of other people. How many men, think you, will you have with you? We will have food and lodging ready for them all."
"Not so, your Majesty," replied Algernon Grey; "I defray my own followers, wherever I be. Lodging, indeed, it may be necessary to find; for the peasantry of the country--ay, and the citizens of the town, have a grand objection, it would seem, to receive strangers in their houses, especially if they be soldiers; and therefore, in this, perhaps, your Majesty's officers must interfere, otherwise it may be difficult to find quarters at once. The number, however, will be about from forty to fifty. Their arms, their clothing, and their food, must be my affair; the rest your Majesty shall provide."
"Leaving little but thanks to furnish," answered Frederic. "However, be it as you will, my noble friend; I am neither poor enough, nor wealthy enough, to take so generous an offer amiss. Farewell for the present; and if you should want aid in any case, two words to our chancellor will be enough to bring it."
CHAPTER IX.
The next ten days in the world's history are like those minutes of the night, where the hour strikes just as the eyes are closed to sleep, and a period passes by unnoted, except by those who dream. There are many such pauses in all annals, where no event marks the passing time on the recording page; and yet how full of interest to many are these unstoried lapses in the march of time. How many gay scenes, how many sad ones, how much of comedy, how much of tragedy, have been enacted in the days not chronicled? How many events have taken place in narrow domestic circles, which, spreading wider in their influences, like the ripples round a stone cast into a clear lake, have carried, almost imperceptibly, the floating fragments of great things to the shore of fate?
I have said that these ten days passed over unnoted, except by those who dream; but one of those was Algernon Grey, who, at the small town of Mannheim, passed the intervening space between his leave-taking of the king of Bohemia, and his return to Heidelberg, busied, to say the truth, more with deep thoughts than important arrangements. His letters were soon written, his courier soon despatched, and all those measures taken which were necessary to call a lordly following to accompany him on his expedition, and to insure rapid supplies of money to meet even more than his own probable expenses. The rest of his time was given up to meditation; for he had left Lovet at Heidelberg, agreeing at once that the short distance which separated them could be considered no infringement of the engagement into which they had entered.
Close rooms in narrow inns have neither a very wholesome nor a very pleasant character. Such as the small fortress, that Mannheim was in those days, could alone afford, offered no great inducement to remain within doors; and the greater part of Algernon's time was spent in wandering by the glistening waters of the Rhine; and, while the current hurried rapidly by, in drawing images of life and human fate from the bright ripples, as they danced and fled beneath his eye. However those images might arise, the train still led him on to the place which he had lately left, and to one fair dreamlike form which rose before him as a remembered vision of delight. All that had taken place immediately before that hour, all the joys and sorrows he had known, would have been but as phantasms, had not still enduring and immortal passion stamped the whole with the mark of reality, and told him that the bitterness was true, and only the dream of happiness that was false.
Few scenes could have been worse chosen to chase such sombre thoughts, to wake him from those dreams of the heart which he believed he had indulged too long. The merry crowd, the gay, enlivening multitude, the ever shifting scenes of busy life might have led on thought after thought to occupy each hour, and banish vain regrets. The grander scenes of nature, the towering mountain, the deep valley, the profound, dark lake, the tempest and the storm, the forest, with its solemn glades and innumerable trees, might well have possessed him, even though it were at first but in part, with other images, and weaned him, if I may so call it, from the engrossing topic which now mastered all his mind. But that calm, grand river, flowing on in its meditative majesty, with sunshine and brightness on its peaceful waters, and none to break, even for a moment, the monotony of solitude, seemed to counsel thoughts of peace, and joy, and love, and spread, like a charm, over the young wanderer the powerful, passionate calmness in which it itself flows on. Agnes Herbert, she whom he loved beyond all power of forgetfulness, was ever present to his heart and mind. He thought of her in her sparkling beauty, as he at first beheld her, in scenes of revelry and joy: he thought of her in agony and helplessness, as he had seen her in the whirling waters of the dark Neckar: he thought of her in calm serenity and high-minded meditation, as they had wandered together over the moonlight terraces, amidst gardens, and woods, and flowers. And he loved her, oh, how he loved her! How his heart yearned, how his bosom panted to return and press her in his arms; but that a dark and irrevocable barrier stood between, and mocked the eager longing of his love.
The common things of life seemed nothing to him; the ordinary events of the day, the meal-time and the sleeping hour, scarcely broke the lapse of the long, only dream. It was ever, ever Agnes, that was present; and when his eyes, worn down by weariness, were closed to waking things, she came upon the wings of the night, and visited his spirit in his sleep. He felt--he could not but feel--that to his peace, at least, her presence was less dangerous than her absence.