He sprang up. 'God! it is awful! Wilhelmine, my love, my mistress!' he said aloud. Ridiculous poet-fellow! he listened as though he expected an answer.
In the distance there was a rumble of thunder, and the restless breeze rioted suddenly in the tree-branches for a moment, passed onward, then swept back again rustling, then came a roll of thunder closer than the last. Another pause—fateful it seemed, as though the garden trembled before the coming storm. A white flash played intermittently upon the fountain, followed by a thunderclap directly overhead, and a torrent of rain poured down. The Duke stood still a moment, the rain beating upon him. The storm delighted him, it answered to his tempestuous mood. He turned away from the castle and walked in the direction of the garden boundary on the south side, passing the drawbridge over the disused and flower-filled moat of the castle wall. What would have been his emotions had he known that his fancy led him to wander whither Wilhelmine had passed but three days before? He came to the garden's limit and stood looking towards the dimly discernible openings of several narrow streets, the oldest and most ill-famed gangways of the town. Of a sudden he descried a small form muffled in a sombre cloak. The street was utterly deserted save for Eberhard Ludwig himself and this forlorn little figure, and the Duke's attention was thus arrested. The pouring rain had not extinguished the light of the two dilapidated hanging lamps, which were fixed upon the walls of the street from whence had issued the diminutive night-wanderer, whom the Duke saw was now making for the castle.
The true Wirtemberger vanishes like smoke before the first drop of rain, and the Duke therefore concluded that any errand undertaken, and continued, in a downpour must be for a purpose of paramount importance. So he watched with curiosity the approaching figure, observing with surprise that it was a child of some ten years old.
'Ha, young person,' called the Duke, as the child reached him; 'whither away so fast, and what may he want in the castle gardens at this time of night?'
Thus apostrophised, the figure hesitated; then apparently alarmed by the sight of the Duke's military cloak, and probably taking him for a sentry or a garden guard, the child ducked forward and would have made a bolt past his interrogator. But the Duke, who was amused and half-suspicious of the boy's errand, caught the figure by his heavy cloak, and dragged him, a trifle roughly, under the light of the lantern at the opposite street corner.
'Now he shall tell me where he was going,' Serenissimus said laughing. The disdainful use of the third person singular seemed to anger the boy, who stood silent and sullen, with bent head. 'But he shall tell me,' repeated the Duke, enforcing his command by a rough shake.
'I will not tell you! What concern is it of yours?' the boy replied at length.
The Duke bent a puzzled look upon his prisoner, whose voice was refined, and whose German was guiltless of the rude Swabian accent. He did not speak like a gutter child, and the face which he turned upon Eberhard was startlingly beautiful. Still the Duke was suspicious. Why should this boy be slinking to the castle by night? His Highness disliked mysteries, or thought he did; though, as a matter of fact, he was always attracted by the mysterious, afraid of it, yet anxious to unravel. He gave the boy another shake. It was a physical relief to shake some one after the long hours of anxiety, and the control he had been forced to exercise upon his longing to shake the Duchess—no new wish on his part, and the only desire that estimable lady had inspired in his breast for many years. So the Duke shook his little prisoner again and again.
The boy remained passive; he was breathless, but he met the Duke's half-laughing, half-angry eyes with a bold look of defiance.
His Highness ceased shaking the child, feeling distinctly ashamed. 'Will he tell me now?' he asked more gently.