'If I ever set eyes on him again I will end him!' the Waldgrave cried, still clinging, I think, to his idea, and exasperated by it. He strode up and down a time or two, and did not grow cooler. 'If it is not that, what is it?' he said at last.
'There are not many light hearts in Nuremberg,' I suggested. 'And of those, few are women's. There must be an end of this soon.'
'You think it is that?' he said.
'Why not?' I answered. 'I am told that the horses are dying by hundreds in the camp. The men will die next. In the end the King will have to march away, or see his army perish piecemeal. In either case the city will pay for all. Wallenstein will swoop down on it, and make of it another and greater Magdeburg. That is a poor prospect for the weak and helpless.'
'It is those rascally Croats!' the Waldgrave groaned. 'They cover the country like flies--are here and there and nowhere all in the same minute, and burn and harry and leave us nothing. We have no troops of that kind.'
'There was plundering in the Wert suburb last night,' I said. 'The King blames the Germans.'
'Soldiers are bad to starve,' the Waldgrave answered.
'Yes; they will see the townsfolk suffer first,' I rejoined, with a touch of bitterness. 'But look whichever way you please, it is a gloomy outlook, my lord, and I do not wonder that my lady is down-hearted.'
He nodded, but presently he said something that showed that he was not satisfied. 'The Countess used to be of a bolder spirit,' he muttered. 'I don't understand it.'
I did not know how to answer him, and fortunately, at that moment, Marie came down to say that my lady proposed to visit Count Leuchtenstein, and that I was to go to her. The Waldgrave heard, and raced up before me, crying out that he would go too. I followed. When I reached the parlour I found them confronting one another, my lady standing in the oriel with her back to the street.