Beside the two soldiers were two of the Abbot's principal officers, and another gentleman, like the soldiers, a sojourner in the territories of Fulda. The high cheek-bones and small dark eyes, the swarthy gipsy-like complexion, all denoted an Eastern birthplace.
The Abbot presented the newcomers to him and named him as the Count von Teschen. His manners were pleasant. He was affable, but it was an affability that told nothing.
"So you were at Magdeburg!" said the Abbot. "A grave blunder!"
Nigel looked questioningly.
"Not on your part, colonel! Nor for that matter on Tilly's. But the Jesuits!"
"But Magdeburg had flouted the Edict!" opposed Nigel.
"Magdeburg was at fault too!" smiled the Abbot. "The Emperor is a good Catholic. So am I, I trust. But the Emperor is too Spanish in his Catholicism. Lutheranism was a kind of quartan fever, a theologic plague, a wen into which all manner of foul humours of discontent drained till it burst. It should have been allowed to exhaust itself. What did my predecessors do? They sat fast. They rewarded their good faithful Catholics. They made no wholesale persecution of the heretics, of whom there were a few. But the heretics found out that the true faith paid them better. Here and there one was quietly deprived of his farm or of our custom. Lutheranism grew stale, as all these violent uprisings must. The old order continued. Little by little, when those tinged with heresy saw that we were not to be moved, they came back."
"They were long-headed men, the Abbots of Fulda! Now Fulda trades with Hesse Cassel and with Thuringia, which are both Lutheran. We exchange our cattle and our wine and leather for their goods or their money, and do not find fault because either smells of Lutheranism."
"It sounds reasonable!" said the Count von Teschen.
"Edicts are all very well," the Abbot continued, "but if edicts are going to destroy men and women and children, homesteads, workshops, trade, they are going to destroy our revenues."