“No.” He smiled. “It is about something I would like you to do. For your grandfather.”
“I’ll do anything for him, sir.”
“We know that. This is the point. He has been ill for along time. Very ill.”
The boy watched him with a troubled face. “He looks very thin,” he said. “I get quite worried when I see him.”
“Exactly. You have heard of Etzel?”
Prince Ferdinand William Otto’s religious instruction was of the best. He had, indeed, heard of Etzel. He knew the famous pilgrimages in order, and could say them rapidly, beginning, the year of Our Lord 915—the Emperor Otto and Adelheid, his spouse; the year of Our Lord 1100, Ulrich, Count of Ruburg; and so on.
“When people are ill,” he said sagely, “they go to Etzel to be cured.”
“Precisely. But when they cannot go, they send some one else, to pray for them. And sometimes, if they have faith enough, the holy miracle happens, and they are cured.”
The Chancellor was deeply religious, and although he had planned the pilgrimage for political reasons, for the moment he lost sight of them. What if, after all, this clear-eyed, clean-hearted child could bring this miracle of the King’s recovery? It was a famous shrine, and stranger things had been brought about by less worthy agencies.
“I thought,” he said, “that if you would go to Etzel, Otto, and there pray for your grandfather’s recovery, it—it would be a good thing.”