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Updated: June 12, 2025
John led the horse, a fine young bay, along a curving road, until he stood before the entrance of the castle. There he waited in silence, but he was using his eyes all the time. He admired the great size and strength of Zillenstein, even in its decayed state, and he was confirmed in his belief that the prince and his suite inhabited the extension of the right wing.
He enlarged upon the greatness of Prince Karl of Auersperg and the ancient grandeur of his Castle of Zillenstein. He referred vaguely to the young princess whom he escorted as a cousin or a niece, and spoke complacently because he had been assigned to the important duty of taking her to Trieste. There was need of haste, too.
She turned away, but John had another question to ask her. His heart smote him that he had not thought of Picard. "Your father, Suzanne?" he said. "I have not heard of him. Is he here?" "They left him a prisoner at Munich. Doubtless he will escape and he, too, will reach Zillenstein."
He might have been awed at another time, but now he was not afraid. Zillenstein, too, came out, bathed in silver, an immense threatening mass set solidly in the shoulder of the opposite mountain, more sinister even in the moonlight than in the sunlight. He wondered how many hundreds of innocent human beings had perished in its dungeons.
Every general who intends to attack an enemy must choose a method of approach, and the crusader's plan to assail Zillenstein was now quite clear in his mind. His decision brought him the usual relief, following the solution of a doubt, and he intended that his journey that day through the great valley should resemble somewhat a stroll of pleasure. He whistled at times and at times he sang.
Relief and joy had been in that look too. He could read it. John had learned in Munich the location of Auersperg's principal castle. It was Zillenstein in a spur of the Eastern Alps just inside Austria, where for centuries the Auerspergs had held great state, as princes of the Holy Roman Empire.
The same friendly disposition that won him the favor of people was now winning him the favor of animals, and Walther, who had spent fifty years in the stables, complimented him on his soothing touch. John saw that he had made a new friend, and he meant to use him as a source of information. He soon learned that Prince Karl would not stay long at Zillenstein.
John sent a smile after them. They were good girls and he knew that he had made two valuable friends who would tell him all that was happening to Julie in Zillenstein. He went back to the stables and plunged anew into his work with a zeal and skill that aroused the admiration of Walther.
Auersperg was one of the last representatives of the old order that troubled Europe so much in its going, for to John, a keen and intense lover of freedom and of the career open to all the talents, the present war was in its main feature a death struggle between autocracy and democracy. He stared at the gigantic ramparts of Zillenstein, as long as the sun endured.
I was sending word to the detachment now on the road from Zillenstein to come here for Mademoiselle Lannes, her maid and you. They're ahorse, and they should arrive in three hours and you can't possibly escape. Before Prince Karl was compelled to leave for the theater of war he put this most important affair in my charge. He has not yet yielded all hope of Mademoiselle Lannes."
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