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And Frau Kunigunde herself, knowing well that the five-and-twenty men outside would be incompetent to avenge their master, confident in her narrow-minded, ignorant pride that no one could take Schloss Adlerstein, and incapable of understanding the changes in society that were rendering her isolated condition untenable, was certain to scout any representation of the dire consequences that the crime would entail.
"Moreover, if our good Raiser has his way, we shall soon be free of the reitern of Schlangenwald, and Adlerstein, and all the rest of the mouse-trap barons. He is hoping to form a league of us free imperial cities with all the more reasonable and honest nobles, to preserve the peace of the country.
Friedel looked as if he could bear it, and Eberhard said, "The order of the Dove of Adlerstein is enough for us." "Headstrong all, headstrong all," sighed Master Gottfried. "One romantic marriage has turned all your heads."
"He had been laying out a Lustgarten for the Romish king at Innspruck, and he is a stout man of his hands, and attempted defence; but he had such a shrewd blow before we came up, that he lay like one dead; and when he was lifted up, he gazed at us like one moon-struck, and said, 'Are my eyes dazed, or are these the twins of Adlerstein, that are as like as face to mirror?
"Yea, truly, Herr Guildmaster, I would see these masterpieces. Ha! What have you here for masterpieces? Our two new double-ganger knights?" And Maximilian entered in a simple riding-dress, attended by Master Gottfried, and by Sir Kasimir of Adlerstein Wildschloss.
Ebbo had protested from the first that it would be of no use, but he waited anxiously for the answer. Thus it stood, when conveyed to him by a tenant of the Ruprecht cloister "Wot you, Eberhard, Freiherr von Adlerstein, that your house have injured me by thought, word, and deed. Your great-grandfather usurped my lands at the ford. Your grandfather stole my cattle and burnt my mills.
He could certainly, when not serving the Emperor, go and act for himself at Thekla's dower castle of Felsenbach, and his mother might save things from going to utter ruin at Adlerstein; but no reflection or self-reproach could make it otherwise than a bitter pill to any Telemachus to have to resign to one so unlike Ulysses in all but the length of his wanderings, one, also, who seemed only half to like, and not at all to comprehend, his Telemachus.
Ermentrude von Adlerstein slept with her forefathers in the vaults of the hermitage chapel, and Christina Sorel's work was done. Surely it was time for her to return home, though she should be more sorry to leave the mountain castle than she could ever have believed possible.
And in like manner, though his grandmother's allegation that his mother had been bent on captivating Sir Kasimir in that single interview at Adlerstein, had always seemed to him the most preposterous of all Kunigunde's forms of outrage, the recollection would recur to him; and he could have found it in his heart to wish that his mother had never heard of the old lady's designs as to the oubliette.
Then there was a letter from Ulm to invite the Baron to consult on the tax demanded by the Emperor for his Italian war, and how far it should concern the profits of the bridge; and another letter from the Markgraf of Wurtemburg, as chief of the Swabian League, requesting the Lord of Adlerstein to be on the look-out for a band of robbers, who were reported to be in neighbouring hills, after being hunted out of some of their other lurking-places.
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