[CHAPTER XI.]
THE LOST DESPATCHES FOUND.
It was evening when Nigel at length passed with his escort through the gates of Vienna, and on arriving at the palace was received with abundance of courtesies by some officer of the household, who ushered him to a suite of apartments in the wing allotted to the gentlemen in attendance on his Imperial Majesty. The Emperor was at dinner, and would expect him at his audience at an early hour on the morrow. A sumptuous supper was set before him, and he was assiduously waited on by two pages. Dinner ended, the same officer appeared again, and asked if he desired to deliver his despatches to the Emperor's secretaries, who would wait upon him, but Nigel made excuse that his commission was to deliver them to the Emperor. This answer the gentleman received civilly enough, and saying he would send some officers to bear him company, wished him a good night's rest after his journey.
Presently three gentlemen came in and joined him at the table, where, the remains of supper being cleared away and fresh wine set down, they sat and played Skat, a game of cards which was then in great vogue among all the people of the eastern part of Germany, and had wiled away the tedium of many a long evening in camp for Nigel. With this and talk of Magdeburg a couple of hours passed pleasantly, and then the party broke up. Nigel was not sorry to be free to go to bed.
It was a room of comfortable aspect. The walls were hung with embossed leather in the Flemish manner; the bed was a wide and high four-poster, and the other furniture consisted of a great chest, a chair or two and some other necessaries. It looked out upon the courtyard of the palace, a large open space surrounded on four sides by piles of building. Nigel could dimly see so much. The rest he left till morning.
Having performed his devotions he stretched himself out upon the bed, drew up the heavy quilted counterpane and prepared to sleep.
But sleep was not to be wooed easily; for what was to happen on the morrow he could not foresee. The profound humiliation of having to confess in open audience to the Emperor the loss of his despatches was perhaps the most poignant of his anticipations. And this he had passed through so often in his mind already that he could not imagine that any worse pang than he had already experienced could arise out of the reality. From this his mind roved to the punishment that might be inflicted. He expected that some military penalty would be his lot, confinement perhaps for a time, the loss of his rank as captain. The worst would be dismissal from the Emperor's service; for like a true Scot he had learned to love his profession, and the service he had chosen had become that which commanded all his loyalty. As a soldier of fortune, who had fought with Wallenstein, he could make his way in any of the armies of Europe, but he was not by nature a mercenary. Dismissal would be the heaviest punishment of all. And then his thoughts, tired of dwelling on these painful themes, flew away to Erfurt and to Ottilie von Thüringen, that mysterious high-born lady whose history was entwined with his own and Wallenstein's.
He had laughed scornfully as he rode to Vienna, thinking of the poor figure Pietro Bramante had cut on the roadside among his pots and phials, wondered how Wallenstein could ever have paid the attention to his hocus-pocus that he had. He had blamed himself for his credulity when the sunlight and the matter-of-fact incidents of his journey had made the doings at Eger seem unreal.
But Ottilie was real. Ottilie had left an abiding impression. For Ottilie Nigel felt he could abandon even the service of the Emperor. Could he but gain one look of rapt intentness, such as the vision of her had cast upon Wallenstein, then all the world might go. The surprising softness of her cheek, the great dark liquid eyes laden with mist or charged with lightning, the rich tones of her proud voice,—he recalled them and dwelt upon them one by one, and his whole being was full of the delight of his contemplation. And then, bathed in a warm glow, he fell asleep.
In the morning he was awakened by Sergeant Blick bringing him his holiday suit, or court suit, if it could be called so, for one who had never been at court before, with its freshly laundered lace collar and cuffs, its handsome doublet and breeches of dark-blue and silver, its fine Spanish leathern boots with tiny gold spurs, its plumed hat to carry out the vain conceit of one having come off a journey. Beneath the collar he wore a silver gorget and his sword, with its silver-tipped sheath burnished to the utmost, hung at his side.