"To what end?" said Nigel. "It is thought the Elector, John George, is too well affected to the Emperor."
"John George is by nature peaceful! But he is gathering an army. And if the Emperor were as politic as he is a good Catholic he would say to John George, 'Come! Let us talk no more about edicts. Let us drive out the Swedes.' But he cannot. He is too headstrong, and too sure of John George. And John George has his people to consider. Do you think Magdeburg has softened them? Has not every village had its separate tale, and, as for Thüringia, there is a preacher called Pastor Rad, who has painted the fall of Magdeburg from one end of the forest to the other in the colours of Sodom and Gomorrah. Beware how you and your troops ride through the forest. Just now the sight of a casque or a gorget would madden the peasantry till not one trooper of your regiment would remain to ride his horse."
Nigel was not ungrateful to the Abbot for his warning, though he suspected the dignitary of an inclination to exaggerate. He was no coward, but he had seen enough of the Forest to know its solitudes of trees, the deep beds of leaves that lay in the hollows, undisturbed from year to year, till those of ten years ago had become thick black soft earth in which a man's body might lie and moulder silently and surely till the bones parted company. In the Forest a shrewd bolt from an old cross-bow, an opportune thrust of pike from behind a tree, a stone well dropped from a bough, might each and all thin his ranks and no enemy be seen.
But these gruesome forebodings were set aside by something the genial and talkative host was saying to Count von Teschen.
"Prague! I have never journeyed thither! They say the Duke of Friedland has a goodly dwelling." He looked round complacently. "Our own is not amiss seeing what a patchwork the ages and my predecessors have made of it. Is the Duke's greater?"
"It is in a great park!" said Count von Teschen. There are six gates to its outer walls, and he has twenty gentlemen of birth serving him as if he were the King of France. The servants and horsemen are numberless, and his riches make the whole expense appear but a tithe of them.
"And how does he spend his time?"
"You have heard of his astrologer?"
"Has he an astrologer of his own?"