Part 62 (2/2)

The Count stooped gently and kissed her forehead. 'Thank you,' he said.

I have very little to add. All the world knows that the King of Sweden, unable to entice Wallenstein from his lines, remained in his camp before Nuremberg for fifteen days longer, during which period the city and the army suffered all the extremities of famine and plague.

After that, satisfied that he had so far reduced the Duke of Friedland's strength that it no longer menaced the city, he marched away with his army into Thuringia; and there, two months later, on the immortal field of Lutzen, defeated his enemy, and fell, some say by a traitor's hand, in the moment of victory; leaving to all who ever looked upon his face the memory of a sovereign and soldier without a rival, modest in suns.h.i.+ne and undaunted in storm. I saw him seven times and I say this.

And all the world knows in what a welter of war and battles and sieges and famines we have since lain, so that no man foresees the end, and many suppose that happiness has quite fled from the earth, or at least from German soil. Yet this is not so. It is true in comparison with the old days, when my lady kept her maiden Court at Heritzburg, and our greatest excitement was a visit from Count Tilly, we lead a troubled life. My lady's eyes are often grave, and the days when she goes with her two brave boys to the summit of the Schloss and looks southward with a wistful face, are many; many, for the Count, though he verges on seventy, still keeps the field and is a tower in the councils of the north. But with all that, the life is a full one--full of worthy things and help given to others, and a great example greatly set, and peace honestly if vainly pursued. And for this and for other reasons, I believe that my lady, doing her duty, hoping and praying and training her children, is happy; perhaps as happy as in the old days when Fraulein Anna prosed of virtue and felicity and Voetius.

The Waldgrave Rupert, still the handsomest of men, but sobered by the stress of war, comes to see us in the intervals of battles and sieges. On these occasions the children flock round him, and he tells tales--of Nordlingen, and Leipzig, and the leaguer of Breysach; and blue eyes grow stern, and chubby faces grim, and sh.e.l.l-white teeth are ground together, while Marie sits pale and quaking, devouring her boys with hungry mother's eyes. But they do not laugh at her now; they have not since the day when the Waldgrave bade them guess who was the bravest person he had ever known.

'Father!' my lady's sons cried. And Marie's, not to be outdone, cried the same.

But the Waldgrave shook his head. 'No,' he said, 'try again.'

My youngest guessed the King of Sweden.

'No,' the Waldgrave answered him. 'Your mother.'

THE END.

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