“Sir,” he said, “I regret to hear you speak like this, and your safety lies in the fact that I do not believe a word of it. Even so, such wild words fill me with displeasure. I beg to remind you that the Election of an Emperor has not yet taken place, and I, for one, am likely to reconsider my decision. Still, as I said, I do not believe a word of your absurd tale.”
“I believe every syllable of it!” cried the Countess with enthusiasm, “and glory that there is a mind brave enough, and a hand obedient to it, to smoke out a robber and a murderer.”
The tension this astonishing revelation caused was relieved by a laugh from the Archbishop.
“My dear Hildegunde, you are forgetting your own ancestors. I venture that no woman of the House of Sayn talked thus when the Emperor Rudolph marched Count von Sayn to the scaffold. You would probably sing another song if asked to restore the millions amassed by Henry III. of Sayn and his successors; all accumulated by robbery as cruel as any that the Red Margrave has perpetrated.”
“My Lord,” said the Countess proudly, “you had no need to ask that question, for you knew the answer to it before you spoke. Every thaler I control shall be handed over to Prince Roland, to be used for the regeneration of his country.”
Again the Archbishop laughed.
“Surely I knew that, my dear, and I should not have said what I did. I suppose you will not allow me to vote against his Highness at the coming Election.”
“Indeed, you shall vote enthusiastically for him, because you know in your own heart he is the man Germany needs.”
“Was there ever such a change of front?” cried the Archbishop. “Why, my dear, the charges you so hotly made against his Highness are as nothing to what he has himself confessed; yet now he is the savior of Germany, when previously—Ah, well, I must not play the tale-bearer.”
“Prince Roland,” cried the girl, “my kinsman, Father Ambrose, said he met you in Frankfort, although now I believe him to have been mistaken.”