Some faithful knights, entirely devoted to their prince, had followed in the wake of the troubadour, and were able to rescue Richard by the aid of a young girl, Mathilde by name, who had recognized the songs sung by Blondel as being the same as those of the royal prisoner in the tower of the château. When the troubadour was led to the door of the prince's cell, he heard a voice call to him: "Est-ce toi, mon cher Blondel?" "Oui, c'est moi, mon seigneur," replied the[{25}] singer. "Comptez sur mon zèle et sur celui de quelques amis fidèles—nous vous deliverons."
GENERAL
VIEW
of
DÜSSELDORF
The next day the escape was made through an overpowering of the guard; and Richard, in the midst of his faithful chevaliers, ultimately arrived in England.
Blondel had meanwhile led the willing Mathilde to the altar, and received a rich recompense from the king.
As the Rhine enters the plain at Cologne, it comes into its fourth and last phase.
Flowing past Düsseldorf and Wesel, it quits German soil just beyond Emmerich, and enters the Low Countries in two branches. The Waal continues its course toward the west by Nymegen, and through its vast estuary, by Dordrecht, to the sea.
The Rhine proper takes a more northerly course, and, as the Neder Rijn, passes Arnheim and Utrecht, and thence, taking the name of Oud Rijn, fills the canals of Leyden and goes onward to the German Ocean.
Twelve kilometres from Leyden is Katwyck aan Zee, where, between colossal dikes, the Rhine at last finds its way to the open sea. More humble yet at its tomb than in the cradle of its birth, it enters the tempestuous[{26}] waters of the German Ocean through an uncompromising and unbeautiful sluice built by the government of Louis Bonaparte.
For more than eleven hundred kilometres it flows between banks redolent of history and legend to so great an extent that it is but natural that the art and architecture of its environment should have been some unique type which, lending its influence to the border countries, left its impress throughout an area which can hardly be restricted by the river's banks themselves.