Romont, proudly leading his peerless young bride, on whose bosom sparkled the famous diamond, suddenly found himself surrounded by a brawling troop of soldiers, who angrily shook their fists at him and denounced him as a traitor. Before he could speak one word in his own defence, the hired assassin sprang forward with raised dagger, crying, “Die, thou traitor!”
Just then Elizabeth sprang forward, and the sharp blade had to pass through her slender body before it could touch Romont. A scene of indescribable confusion ensued; but although Romont swiftly carried his dying bride into her mother’s tent, where every care was lavished upon her, she lived only long enough to whisper, “I die happy since I could save you, beloved!” and gently breathed her last.
When the fatal truth dawned upon the frantic bridegroom, he fell fainting across his dead bride; and it was only then that they discovered that he too had been wounded, for his doublet was drenched with blood. Nobly forgetting her own sorrow to minister to her husband’s saviour, the Lady of Stein nursed Romont so carefully that in spite of his longing to follow Elizabeth’s pure spirit into the better land, he was soon restored to health. But he never forgot his bride, and when her parents ultimately died, he left his own country to take up his abode in a foreign land.
As for the Duke, he was sorely punished for all his crimes. Not only did he lose Elizabeth, whom he passionately loved; but a few days after her death he was defeated by her countrymen at the battle of Grandson. Such was the fury of that Swiss onslaught, that Charles would have fallen into their hands had not his fleet steed swiftly carried him out of their reach. A few months later he suffered a second crushing defeat at their hands at Morat; and he was slain near Nancy, in the following year, while trying to escape from his Swiss foes for the third and last time.
FRIBOURG
The city of Fribourg, capital of the canton of the same name, is picturesquely situated on a rocky height almost surrounded by the Sarine, one of the tributaries of the Aare. A mediæval town, it boasts of many interesting relics, while in its cathedral stands the great modern organ known the world over.
When Charles the Bold experienced his second appalling defeat at Morat, in 1476, one of the Swiss soldiers volunteered to carry the joyful tidings to Fribourg, his native city. Although he had fought bravely and was very weary after his almost superhuman efforts, he snatched a green twig from a neighbouring lime-tree, stuck it in his hat so that his people could see from afar this sign of victory, and quickly started for home. Tradition claims that he ran every step of the way; the fact is, he reached the city so exhausted that he sank down lifeless as soon as the one word “Victory” had escaped from his parched lips.
His fellow-citizens were so proud of this victory, and of the messenger who brought the news so quickly to them, that they planted the lime twig on the very spot where he had fallen. There it throve and grew, until it is now a mighty tree, with a boll fourteen feet in circumference; and it still serves as a green monument of this famous triumph of the Swiss army.
The whole valley of the Sarine and its tributaries is most picturesque, and the soil so fertile that it supports countless heads of the finest cattle in the world. After passing the quaint little mediæval town of Romont, with its old castle and fortifications, you come to a hill in the middle of the Sarine valley on which rises the famous castle of Gruyère, recently restored, and now one of the most beautiful show places in Switzerland.