For a full minute Roland thought he had succeeded, but as the surprise died out of the merchant’s countenance, there replaced it that mask of caution which had had so much to do with the building of his fortune. During their conference Herr Goebel cudgeled his brain, trying to remember where he had seen this young man before, but memory had roamed among clerks, salesmen, and industrious people of that sort where, somehow, this young fellow did not fit in. When Roland suddenly sprung on him the incredible statement that he was a member of the Imperial family, the merchant’s recollection then turned towards pageants he had seen, in one of which this young stranger might very well have borne a part. Blood was beginning to tell.
But now experience came to the merchant’s aid. Only in romances did princes of the blood royal wander about like troubadours. Even a member of the lesser nobility did not call unheralded at the house of a merchant. The aristocracy always wanted money, it is true, “but what they thought they might require, they went and took,” as witness the piratical Barons of the Rhine, whose exactions brought misery on the great city of Frankfort.
Then all at once came the clinching remembrance that when the Electors were appealed to on behalf of the young Prince, the three Archbishops had promptly seized his Royal Highness, and, in spite of the pleadings of the Empress (the Emperor was drunk and indifferent) placed him in the custody of the Archbishop nearest to Frankfort, the warrior prelate of Mayence, who imprisoned him in the strong fortress of Ehrenfels, from which, well guarded and isolated as it was upon a crag over-hanging the Rhine, no man could escape.
“Will you kindly be seated again, sir,” requested the merchant, and if he had spoken a short time before, he would have put the phrase “your Royal Highness” in the place of the word “sir.”
Roland, after a moment’s hesitation, sat down. He saw that his coup had failed, because he was unable to back it up by proofs. His dramatic action had been like a brilliant cavalry charge, for a moment successful, but coming to naught because there was no solid infantry to turn the temporary confusion of the enemy into complete rout. Realizing that the battle must be fought over again, the Prince sat back with a sigh of disappointment, a shade of discontent on his handsome face.
“I find myself in rather a quandary,” proceeded the merchant. “If indeed you are the Emperor’s son, it is not for such as I to cross-examine you.”
“Ask me any questions you like, sir. I shall answer them promptly enough.”
“If I beg you to supply proof of the statement you make, you would be likely to reply that as you dared not enter your father’s Palace, you are unable to furnish me with corroboration.”
“Sir, you put the case in better language than I could employ. In more halting terms that is what I should have said.”
“When were you last in the Palace?”