Each, despite the desperate importance of their mission, felt all emotion absorbed in a curiosity as to this man who had in a few years laid North Europe under his feet, and behaved in a manner so extraordinary for a conqueror.
Karl, who had no personal attendant, valet, or servant, rose from the rough camp bed where he took his few hours’ repose, and came at once to meet the envoys of Augustus.
If he felt any satisfaction in this moment, when the man who had so carelessly and contemptuously affronted him was reduced to send to sue for mercy, it was not betrayed in his passive countenance.
He might indeed be used to triumphs; few men of his years had ever had a career of such uninterrupted success, and perhaps he was already indifferent to the haughty position of conqueror or at least too well used to it; he stood a moment holding up a little lamp and looking at the two Saxon gentlemen who stood, still in their traveling cloaks, bare-headed before him.
For the first second they did not know who stood before them; they were used to the magnificence and display of Augustus that he maintained even in his downfall, and Karl in his plain coat and short hair looked like an infantryman.
“The King,” said Count Piper, with a curious pride in the man whom he disliked.
Karl cut short their rather confused compliments.
“You are from the Elector of Saxony?” he demanded sternly, and set the lantern on the table.
Baron D’Imhof was the spokesman.
“Yes, sire,” he said.