"Have you seen him since his ... resignation?"
"Yes, sire; at Eger on my journey here."
"And how does he bear his retirement?"
"In truth I know almost nothing, sire. When I was under him I rarely saw him, and was not of his familiar circle, if indeed he had such. I do not know. He asked for my company at Eger to divide a bottle of wine with him. He seems to occupy himself with astronomy and the mathematics."
"I have heard," rejoined Maximilian, "that he had great acquaintance and much controversy with a learned doctor, one Paracelsus, but these matters are beyond my ken. Men and women are more to me than the stars."
Several gentlemen of the court had gathered round the Elector, and it was the hearing of the name of Wallenstein that drew them, for it was well known that the Elector and he were on terms of discord. In the days of the Winter King it had been Maximilian and his armies who had been in fact the Emperor's legions, then as a counterpoise the Emperor had raised up Wallenstein. When Wallenstein had made Maximilian the pale shadow of an armed power, Maximilian had plotted till Wallenstein was deposed and his army scattered to the ten thousand hamlets of Germany.
"A veritable Cincinnatus!" said an elderly gentleman.
"He raised cabbages for sauerkraut, did he not?" a younger man asked.
"Your Cincinnatus," said the Elector, "raiseth weeds of a poisonous and rebellious nature."
"Such as, sire?" a staid and solemn-faced minister of state inquired.