Wallenstein made no movement of passion. He looked at her and saw that she was desirable and lovely beyond the common allurement of women, beyond the beauty of all princesses he had seen. But he saw, too, that there was something lofty in her soul, a virgin chastity, that forbade all trivial thought of dalliance. It was a solemn compact.
He knelt at her feet. She laid one soft hand upon his head and said—
"Be my knight, Albrecht, without fear. And when all the fields are won, I await you."
He took her other hand and kissed it. The vibration of a strong emotion passed through him. He was left alone.
[CHAPTER XVI.]
NIGEL'S NEW REGIMENT.
On the next day Wallenstein departed as secretly as he had come. Father Lamormain ascertained that he did not return to Eger. One rumour had it that he had gone to his estate in Friedland, which is in the north-eastern part of Bohemia, bordered by Silesia on one side and the kingdom of Saxony on the other, a remote mountainous region, sparsely inhabited. The rumour may well have been true, for that was where the Duchess of Friedland lay at that time, and it had never been said that her lord neglected her for any other dame, unless it were Dame Bellona, who, ugly as she is, has in her time made many good wives jealous, and proved fatal to untold thousands of her wooers.
Three of these wooers, no longer perhaps so ardent or so able as of old, advised the Emperor in warlike matters. Colonel von Falck had taken part in the wars against the Turks in the days of the late Emperor Rudolf, and had lost an eye. He was almost patriarchal, but men said of him that he was a tremendous judge of Tokay, and unerring in his selection of officers. Of the former branch of military knowledge he gave almost daily proof, and his reputation in the latter, like many official reputations, rested on evidence which was quite irrefragable, since no one knew what it was. The second was a retired Master of Camp, a man just past middle age, who had had the misfortune to lose an arm, his left, fortunately, at the Weisser Berge. He was an acknowledged authority on waggons, horses, stores, cannon, and equipment generally. And an officer who has lost an arm by a cannon-ball must be admitted to have some practical knowledge of artillery. The third officer was the Grand Duke Lothar, a blood relation of the Emperor, who, owing to a very real lameness, acquired in his subaltern days, had been obliged to confine his military excursions within the narrow limits of Vienna or Ratisbon. But he had stored up a profound knowledge of Cæsar's 'Commentaries,' and was very well acquainted with the theory of war as it was then understood.