He hastened down the hill to his horse, and sprang into the saddle.
"Away, my faithful steed!" he cried aloud. "Show me the way, for love and grief have bewildered my clear brain. Bear me where knightly duty and princely honour claim my presence—for I know not where."
And the good beast, as if it understood his master's words, rushed with him away farther and still farther south through the dim twilight, and beneath the bright beams of the full moon. Without weariness, though without rest, it bore him on, and when the morrow's sun stood in noonday splendour they had reached the goal, and the young duke stood before the gate of his own Staufenburg.
Gela's sacrifice was not offered in vain. The words the old monk uttered that morning in the castle chapel were fulfilled. After his uncle's death, young Frederick of Swabia was raised to the throne of Germany, and all that the realm and people of Germany had hoped from him was more than fulfilled.
His strong hand gave unity, strength, and majesty to the divided land, such as no ruler after him was ever able to bestow; and when the imperial crown of Rome was also placed upon his head, the proud people of Italy bowed before Frederick Barbarossa, did him homage, and acknowledged his power.
The laurels of many a victory rested on the Emperor's brow; his house was happy, his race flourished, his name lay like a word of blessing on every lip; and when Gela, still in the bloom of youth, closed her eyes in death, she knew that she had not in vain renounced Frederick and happiness.
Beneath the shelter of his favourite castle the Emperor founded a town, and named it after the unforgotten loved one of his youth, "Gelashausen;" and when on his travels he came to the forest of the Kinzig Valley, he led his horse silently aside, fastened the bridle to a tree stem, and ascended the hill to the majestic oak. There leaning his head, amid whose gold full many a thread of silver gleamed, against the trunk, he closed his eyes, and dreamed once more the old delightful dream.
And the people called that tree ever after "the Emperor's oak."