The Duke smiled upon me, like a man that has a complete retort on his tongue but who is content for the present to reserve it.
"My friend," he said, suavely, "I will reply to you presently. I have a word to speak to your betters."
He turned him about to Dessauer.
"And what, Lord High Chancellor of Plassenburg, think you of this masquerading? Dignified, is it not? And your wondrous speech in court that was to have done such great things. Will you be pleased to abide with us here in the Wolfsberg? Or must you forsake us to pleasure the Emperor, who, poor man, cannot sleep of nights in his bed at Ratisbon till the eloquent Doctor is come to cheer him with the full-flowing river of speech?"
"Duke Otho," said Dessauer, "my life is indeed in your hands. I hold it forfeit. A few years less or more are but little to Leopold von Dessauer now. But there is one who will most bloodily avenge us if a hair of our heads falls to the ground."
"Who?" said Otho, sneeringly. "Karl Miller's Son, I suppose. Ah, fool that you are, I hold your poor Karl in the palm of my hand!"
"It is like enough," said Dessauer, with a quick look, the look of a keen fencer when he sees an advantage. "I have often enough seen the palm of your hand approach Karl Miller's Son's treasury when I kept the moneys."
I saw the face of Otho twitch angrily. But he had evidently made up his mind to command his temper, sure of having that up his sleeve which would sufficiently answer all taunts.
"You mistake me," he said, with more subtlety than I had expected from the brute. "I had not meant to prove ungrateful. I am but newly come to my own here in the Wolfmark. I have learned from your host, Bishop Peter, how precious a thing forgiveness is. And now I am resolved to practise it. There is a time to love and a time to hate; a time to war and a time to be at peace. This is the last news I had from the holy clerk whose revenues I pay. So lay it to heart, as I have done."
"Glad am I," said Dessauer, courteously, as if he had been turning a phrase on the terrace at Plassenburg—"glad am I that in your hour you are to be mindful of old friends, for they are like old wine, which grows better and mellower with the years."