“Your Highness,” began the Archbishop, “I find myself in a position of some embarrassment. I think explanations are due to me from you both. Here I ride between two escaped prisoners, and I travel away from, instead of towards, their respective dungeons. My plain duty, on encountering you, was to place you in custody of a sufficient guard, marching you separately the one to Pfalz and the other to Ehrenfels. Having accomplished this I should report the case to my two colleagues, yet here am I actually compounding a misdemeanor, and assisting prisoners to escape.”
“My Lord,” spoke up Roland, “I am quite satisfied that my own imprisonment has been illegal, therefore I make no apology for circumventing it. Before entering upon any explanation, I ask enlightenment regarding the detention of my lady of Sayn. Am I right in surmising that she, like myself, was placed under arrest by the three Archbishops?”
“Yes, your Highness.”
“On what charge?”
“High treason.”
“Against whom?”
There was a pause, during which the Archbishop did not reply.
“I need not have asked such a question,” resumed the Prince, “for high treason can relate only to the monarch. In what measure has her ladyship encroached upon the prerogative of the Emperor?”
“Your Highness forgets that there is such a thing as treason against the State.”
“Are not members of the nobility privileged in this matter?”