"Those are the true words, my young friend," he said at length with a firm voice, proudly raising his head, his eyes sparkling with their usual animation, "those are the words. I thank you for bringing them to my mind. Stand forward, Maxx Stumpf, knight of Schweinsberg, relate the result of your mission. But first of all, give me another glass, Bertha!"
"It was last Thursday, when I left you," began the knight: "Hans disguised me in this garb, and instructed me how to comport myself. I went to the Golden Stag at Pfullingen, just to try if any one would recognise me in it, but the hostess brought me a can of wine with all the indifference she would have done to a perfect stranger she had never seen before. And a city counsellor, with whom I had exchanged angry words not a week before in the same room, drank with me, supposing I had followed the vocation of pedlar from my childhood. That young man," pointing to Albert, "was also in the room."
The Duke appeared to recover his spirits, and was more cheerful. He asked Albert whether he had noticed the knight in his garb of pedlar, and whether he looked the character?
He replied, smiling, "I think he played his part to perfection."
"From Pfullingen I went the same evening to Reutlingen. I entered the public room of an inn, where I met a tribe of Leaguists, consisting of citizens, from all parts, who were exulting with the Reutlingeners, for having torn down the stag horns, the emblems of your house, from their city gates. Though they abused you and sang burlesque songs at your expense, still they appeared to fear your name. On Good Friday I proceeded towards Tübingen. My heart beat high when I descended through the wood near the castle, and saw the beautiful valley of the Neckar before me, with the fortified towers and steeples of that place peering above the hill."
The Duke compressed his lips, turned away, and looked at the distant country. Schweinsberg paused, sympathising in his master's pain, who beckoned to him, however, to proceed.
"Descending into the plain, I wandered onward towards Tübingen. The town had been already occupied by the League some days, the castle still held out, and only a few troops remained in the camp, which was pitched on the hill overlooking the valley of Ammer. I determined to slip into the town, for the purpose of finding out how affairs stood in the castle. You know the little inn in the upper town, not far from the church of St. George? I went there, and called for wine. On my way I learned that the knights of the League often assembled in the same house, and therefore I considered it the best place to attain my object."
"You risked a good deal," interrupted the knight of Lichtenstein: "it was very possible some one might have wished to buy some of your wares, and then the pedlar in disguise would have been discovered."
"You forget it was a holiday," replied the other, "so that I had a good excuse not to open my pack, and recommend my goods for sale, according to the custom of pedlars. But I had sufficient proof of the security of my disguise, for I sold a box of healing plaster to George von Fronsberg, God knows, I would gladly have come to blows with him, and given him an opportunity on the spot to make use of it. They were still at high mass in the church, and no one in the inn; but I learned from the master of the house, that the knights in the castle had agreed to a truce till Easter Monday. When church service was over, many knights and other men came, as I expected, into the room where I was, for their morning's potation. I seated myself in a corner on the bench near the stove, the proper place for people of my condition in the presence of their superiors."
"Who did you see there?" inquired the Duke.