"It is a year since, on the Elector's day at Regensburg, they clamoured one and all for Wallenstein's dismissal. They urged that he was become too powerful for a subject."
"Maximilian's jealousy!" she interposed.
"Maximilian was one amongst many! I judged the advice sound. I dismissed Wallenstein. My foes were beaten down. There was no need to maintain an army of seventy thousand men in the field to nourish the ambition of a general. It is enough, Stephanie. No good can come of princesses meddling in politics. Look to it that you entreat not our cousin Maximilian slightingly, or even with less than the graciousness that becomes a princess. I am too indulgent. The affair can wait till it be considered further. You would not be the first princess of the house of Habsburg to wed without love. Therefore make no grievance of it!"
He held out his hand, which the Archduchess bent over and kissed, and she left the Emperor once more alone.
[CHAPTER XIV.]
IN THE CIRCLE OF THE EMPEROR.
That evening Nigel was not left to eat his meal in the little salle à manger adjoining his bedchamber, but was invited by the officers of the guard to join them, a compliment that was worth the paying, seeing that the officers of the guard were drawn from the oldest families in Austria and Hungary, and that a mere sub-lieutenant in the guard ranked as a regimental captain in the army, and a captain was equal to a colonel, if not higher, in the point of distinction.
Notwithstanding that he was a regimental officer bearing the rank of captain, and an outlander, a fact which emphasised another fact, that he was a soldier of fortune, or, if we prefer it, a soldier without a fortune, whereas his hosts were men of high family and fortunes who happened to be soldiers, they received him with that perfection of politeness which already characterised the Austrian nobility in so far as it came into daily contact with the court. Something there was of the ceremony and grandiosity of Spain, which the intermarriages of princes and princesses had brought about, mingled with the brightness and gaiety that sprung of a northern race and northern air, and of a greater activity of body and alertness of mind.