“I am easily satisfied, madame, and had they been fewer I might have missed this charming outlook. I am to understand, then, that you have no demands to make of me; and that I am free to depart, accompanied by your good wishes.”
“With my good wishes now and always, surely, my Lord. I have no demands to make—the word ill befits the lips of a humble vassal; but, being here——”
“Ah! But, being here——” interrupted the Archbishop, glancing keenly at her.
“I have a favour to beg of you. I wish to ask permission to build a castle on the heights above Trarbach, for my son.”
“The Count Johann, third of the name?”
“The same, my Lord, who is honoured by your Lordship’s remembrance of him.”
“And you wish to place this stronghold between your castle of Starkenburg and my town of Treves? Were I a suspicious man, I might imagine you had some distrust of me.”
“Not so, my lord. The Count Johann will hold the castle in your defence.”
“I have ever been accustomed to look to my own defence,” said the Archbishop, drily; adding, as if it were an afterthought, “with the blessing of God upon my poor efforts.”
The faintest suspicion of a smile hovered for an instant on the lips of the countess, that might have been likened to the momentary passing of a gleam of sunshine over the placid waters of the river far below; for she well knew, as did all others, that it was the habit of the fighting Archbishop to smite sturdily first, and ask whatever blessing might be needed on the blow afterwards.