UC-NRLF 
 
 B 3 32E SM7 
 
 . 
 
 
 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 CALIFO*tsltA 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT 
 
 A HISTORICAL TALE. 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS COLLEY GRATTAN. 
 
 AUTHOR OF "JACCIUELINE OF HOLLAND," "THE HEIRESS OF 
 BRUGES," " HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS," &C. &C. &C. 
 
 " Manifold matters of recreation, policie, love adventures, &c., abundantlie 
 administered ; and all in the golden reigne of blessed Qt, .en Elizabeth, the sweete 
 floure of amiable virginitie." Epistle to Stow's Chronicle* 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 SAUNDERS AND OTLEY, CONDUIT-STREET. 
 1835. 
 
LONDON : 
 
 JOHN LEIGHTON, JOHNSON*S-COURT, 
 FLEET-STREET. 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 HISTORICAL parallels, whether of per- 
 sons or events, show generally more inge- 
 nuity than truth. They are seldom as in- 
 structive as they are amusing ; and are 
 rarely turned to the good purposes of 
 effective example. Few transactions in the 
 history of any given nation resemble each 
 other more than the Congress of Cologne, 
 two centuries and a half ago, and the 
 Conference of London in our own days ; 
 both held for the special and final ar- 
 rangement of the affairs of the Nether- 
 lands, and both so eminently insufficient 
 for that great object. 
 
 It is only necessary to refer to the re- 
 cords of those almost interminable nego- 
 b 
 
 505 
 
11 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 tiations to establish the general resem- 
 blance. The main difference is that 
 Holland was then in the position which 
 Belgium occupies now j the very country 
 which then laboured to throw off the 
 yoke now striving to maintain the domi- 
 nion its people being so changed in 
 character as to follow the example it 
 then struggled against. It is certainly 
 striking and singular that the modern 
 King of Holland should stand precisely 
 in the situation which the King of Spain 
 occupied in the olden time, retarding 
 and frustrating by self-willed intolerance 
 the settlement which he knows and feels 
 to be inevitable. It is not, indeed, 
 on the same grounds which supported 
 Philip II. that William I. takes his stand. 
 And far be it from us to insinuate any 
 general resemblance between the bigot 
 tyrant of old and the constitutional 
 
INTRODUCTORY. Ill 
 
 monarch of to-day. It is only on the 
 score of obstinate perseverance that the 
 analogy exists ; religious fanaticism being 
 mainly the basis of the one, and com- 
 mercial selfishness of the other. As for 
 all the minor details; the joint protec- 
 tion afforded by France and England to 
 the newly-established state ; the refusal, 
 by the rejected dynasty, to acknowledge 
 its chief governor enthroned at Brussels ; 
 the twenty-seven articles on the one hand 
 and the twenty-four articles on the other ; 
 the hollow arbitration of the emperor 
 (Russia and Prussia did not then poli- 
 tically exist to form the trinity of des- 
 potism) ; the bad faith and jealousy of 
 some governments ; and the tortuous 
 shifts of diplomacy they show a simili- 
 tude so marvellous, that it seems as if the 
 master spirits of this age were forced to 
 model their course on the errors of one 
 
IV INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 which, in common cases, they no doubt 
 abhor and despise. 
 
 All Europe was harrassed and con- 
 vulsed by " the Dutch and Belgic ques- 
 tion " of the sixteenth century. To 
 bring it if possible to a termination by 
 means of amicable discussion, commis- 
 sioners were appointed by common con- 
 sent, including many men of high rank 
 and some of consummate talent : and 
 this memorable congress assembled in 
 the ancient city of Cologne, early in the 
 spring of the year 1579. 
 
 The eminent persons composing the 
 congress would have felt it little con- 
 sistent with their dignity to come to the 
 rendezvous in the unostentatious guise 
 of modern statesmen. The spirit of the 
 times is happily changed ; and people are 
 now rapidly losing the veneration for 
 factitious display, which was one great 
 
INTRODUCTORY. V 
 
 cause of the too-long admitted influence 
 of rank whose chief claim to distinction 
 was riches. 
 
 The important occasion we now allude 
 to brought together three archbishops 
 two of them electors of the empire, and 
 one the pope's nuncio one bishop, two 
 dukes, one count, various abbots, seig- 
 neurs, counsellors, intendants, juriscon- 
 sults and secretaries ; besides a crowd of 
 unofficial individuals, attracted to the 
 scene and illegitimate actors in it, for the 
 purposes of the many princes, potentates, 
 and pretenders whose interests were in- 
 volved in the great questions to be de- 
 bated. 
 
 Considerable magnificence was dis- 
 played by this assemblage of function- 
 aries. Their numerous followers and 
 splendid retinues filled the houses of en- 
 tertainment ; while the influx of visitors, 
 
VI INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 more or less connected with them, left 
 little room, even in private mansions, 
 for the casual travellers who resorted to 
 the city during the long course of the 
 negotiations. Cologne had rarely been 
 the scene of such splendour, such de- 
 bauchery, and such intrigue. And the 
 long-past glories of Roman, Franc, and 
 Hun, of emperors, kings, and conquer- 
 ors were eclipsed and for awhile forgot- 
 ten, in the extravagance of the epoch 
 we describe. 
 
 But we trust our readers will not take 
 the alarm, nor imagine that, under the 
 guise of a historical tale, we are about to 
 inflict on them a political romance. We 
 disclaim all the awful pretensions implied 
 in such an attempt ; we disown all notion 
 of making a story of past times a covert 
 satire on those in which we live. If, 
 indeed, in the course of our narrative 
 
INTRODUCTORY. Vll 
 
 events of history invite remark, as the 
 individuals we introduce require descrip- 
 tion, we shall not shrink any more than 
 on former occasions from hazarding an 
 opinion, albeit in opposition to some of 
 those which are called " received" ones. 
 But with regard to this diplomatic pan- 
 tomime, so rich in tricks and transforma- 
 tions, so far from introducing it by design 
 or meaning to dwell on it, we never 
 should have mentioned it at all, had it 
 not been in the midst of its gorgeous 
 display that our heroine made her first 
 appearance on the public scene of life, 
 and that she owed to its records her intro- 
 duction to the broad pages of history. 
 
 That the serious purpose of the con- 
 gress might commence with suitable 
 solemnity, and in the hope of frustrating 
 the many sinister attempts which were 
 at work to counteract its intended good 
 
Vlll INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 effects, the members unanimously agreed 
 to proceed to business under the auspices 
 of religion ; "beginning," as one of the 
 historians observes, " with God him- 
 self." Prayers were put up to Heaven 
 for divine assistance in the important 
 task ; and, at the suggestion of Gheb- 
 hard Truchses, the Elector-archbishop 
 of Cologne, a procession of the Sacred 
 Host, and all its auxiliary pomps, was 
 fixed on, as the first step in the mighty 
 affair, it being however doubtful to the 
 before-cited author whether the prince- 
 prelate was " inspired by a wish for the 
 public weal, or that it was a pretext of 
 this personage, who assumed an appear- 
 ance of piety, for better securing the 
 archiepiscopal throne, the possession of 
 which had been long disputed." 
 
 The solution of this doubt may be 
 found in the progress of our story, on 
 which we forthwith proceed to enter. 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 IT was early morning, yet the whole popu- 
 lation of Cologne and the surrounding neigh- 
 bourhood was abroad, in the streets and squares 
 of that most ancient city. It was working day, 
 yet burgher and boor, artizan and peasant, had 
 alike donned their sabbath attire, and shone 
 forth in all the bravery of their picturesque 
 costumes. It was April, scarcely April, that 
 capricious month of smiles and tears, when the 
 budding hopes of one hour are so often nipped 
 by the next, and the young spring, like a new 
 fledged bird, shrinks fluttering ere it trusts 
 
 VOL. I. B 
 
2 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 itself on the expanse of time yet the air was 
 soft, and the sun as warm and bright as when it 
 smiles on the gay groups of a summer fete. 
 The bells from a hundred steeples rung forth 
 joyous peals ; culverins and falconets sent their 
 voices out from every fort and bastion in the 
 walled circle of two leagues, by which the city 
 was girded. Bands of martial music tempered 
 the discord by their melody ; and sound, in all 
 its wild varieties, thrilled confusedly through 
 the air, and baffled the mimicry of the sur- 
 rounding echoes. 
 
 While Heaven and man thus combined to do 
 honour to the day, Heaven^s fairest work, and 
 man's brightest inspiration was not wanting, to 
 throw a grace over the otherwise imperfect 
 scene. Woman, in her most attractive forms, 
 moved along the promenades, leaned from the 
 windows, or stood on platforms, to gaze un- 
 obstructed at the spectacle below. 
 
 Of the many groups so placed, which caught 
 the observation of the passers-by, and checked 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 3 
 
 their impatient longing for the appearance of 
 the procession, one, which occupied the heavy 
 sculptured balcony of a mansion fronting the 
 church of St. Columba, was peculiarly attrac- 
 tive. It consisted of four females, young, 
 lovely, and dressed in a fashion that bespoke 
 them of high rank. He must have been indeed 
 a stranger in Cologne, who did not know the 
 residence of the bold Baron Conrad von Kriech- 
 lingen ; while the inquisitive soon learned the 
 names of the noble houses to which belonged the 
 liveried varlets who lounged at the portal with 
 those of the family. The still more curious 
 quickly found out that with the baron's two 
 daughters above, were their visitors, Anne, the 
 youthful wife of John Casimir Duke of Saxe- 
 Coburg, and Agnes, only daughter of John 
 George late Count of Mansfeldt. 
 
 " And how, worthy and worshipful sir," asked 
 
 an old woman, of tottering gait and stooping 
 
 figure, who plied closely with questions the 
 
 pompous functionary who bore the title of ba- 
 
 2 B 
 
4, AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 ronial gate-opener to the family of Kriechlingen, 
 " how may the eyes that mark yon blooming 
 group of young beauties, distinguish the matron 
 from the maidens ; and then know one of the 
 latter from the others ?" 
 
 " In good sooth, dame, 'twould seem as though 
 some more than common motive spurred on 
 your questionings ? Is it so ?" said the con- 
 cierge. 
 
 "vAnd what if it were, kind master ?" replied 
 the crone, with a keen and crafty tone of voice, 
 that seemed at once to admit and justify an un- 
 acknowledged object. " What if I had some 
 cause beyond an old wife's gossiping, for seek- 
 ing to know the Duchess Anne from the fair 
 virgins she consorts with ?' ; 
 
 " Oh, it is thus? another suitor for the bounty 
 of the generous Duchess Anne ; verily her fame 
 for charity has travelled before her, albeit she 
 came and stays here incognito ; and well needs 
 her purse to be lined, if every twenty-four hours 
 of her visit bring applicants in proportion to 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. O 
 
 the one day she has been in Cologne already. 
 Good woman, I cannot be accessory to her high- 
 ness's annoyance. I prithee, go thy ways, nor 
 seek to interrupt the noble lady's pleasures by a 
 suit that's out of season." 
 
 "And how know you, good sir, that the 
 pleasures of the princess, aye, her very happi- 
 ness and welfare, may not be at stake, may not 
 depend on the receipt of this precious missive ?" 
 
 As she uttered these words, the speaker drew 
 from beneath her cloak a letter, which the por- 
 ter instantly saw to be far different from the 
 coarse texture and vulgar shape of a petition 
 for alms. It was of coloured paper, tastefully 
 folded, and tied with fantastic knots of ribbon, 
 to one of which was attached a pendant seal, 
 while it emitted a sweet odour that seemed much 
 to sooth the rising asperity of the porter's feel- 
 ings. An apparent accident, which happened 
 at the moment, might perchance have had some 
 mollifying influence of the same nature. A 
 small leathern bag, fastened with a ring of wire, 
 
6 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 dropped from the old woman's girdle, and its 
 chink on the pavement sounded marvellously 
 harmonious. The porter stooped to lift it up : 
 and maugre a portly paunch, and the joint-stif- 
 fening action of sixty summers, he bent double, 
 with a promptness not exceeded by the most 
 supple examples of court prostration. 
 
 The old woman did not oppose him, but 
 faintly laughed, as with a malicious triumph, 
 while he raised his apoplectic face to a level 
 with her own, (which, however, she instantly 
 turned aside,) presenting her the bag at the same 
 time, and puffing forth an apology in these 
 terms 
 
 " Respectable and well-born dame, I crave 
 your pardon humbly, for my rude mistake and 
 over-hasty speech. Aye, verily, are my eyes 
 waxing old and dim, or I should easily have 
 seen by your air and bearing, in despite of mo- 
 dest though by no means unbecoming attire 
 for, sooth to say, this bodice of orange-tawney 
 kersey, with rabbit-skin trimmings goes well 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. ? 
 
 with the shades of brown in this ingrain mantle 
 and hood, and suits no doubt the features and 
 complexion of the staid, yet, I warrant me, still 
 comely wearer. Aye, easily should I have seen, 
 but for this teazing rheum which mars my 
 vision, that I spoke to the worthy wife or mother 
 of some substantial citizen. Would it please 
 you, good dame, to enter into my lodge here a 
 bit, and look out unobstructed from the postern 
 window on the great procession, which must 
 even now have started from the palace, and 
 \vill pass through our neighbourhood anon ?" 
 
 The object of this courtesy seemed to take 
 it all with a perfect business-like indifference, 
 as though such sudden shifts of opinion and 
 manners were familiar to her experience, and 
 that their secret springs were not too deep for 
 her philosophy. 
 
 " Good Master Porter," said she, moving 
 under the porch the while, "you put me to 
 shame by your civilities, for I cannot accept 
 them; half, as it were, by reason of my own un- 
 
8 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 worthiness, and the other half from the pressing 
 necessity of others' concerns, which hurries me 
 away. In a word, kind sir, will you under- 
 take to deliver this letter into Duchess Anne's 
 fair hands, secretly and quickly ?" 
 
 " Why, for the slight service of passing on a 
 letter, so complaisant and courteous as this 
 seems to be," resumed the porter, watching 
 keenly the movements of the crone, whose 
 fingers leisurely undid the fastening of her 
 money-bag, " for such a good turn, and all in 
 the way of mine office, I would not willingly 
 stand on punctilios of mere place. I think I 
 might contrive to send the billet through the 
 duchess's varlet yonder, to her highness's tire- 
 woman, and so by toilette-time to-morrow into 
 her own fair hand, or at least so place it that it 
 should fall under her own bright eye."" 
 
 " Kind thanks for your good offices," replied 
 the old woman, coldly, while she replaced the 
 purse in her girdle. " No, Master Porter, no. 
 Such snail's-pace, round-about proceedings are 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 9 
 
 not of fitting gait for the rapid flow of hot, and 
 youthful, and noble blood. And did such 
 means suit the purpose of the princely I would 
 say the lordly, or needs let it be simply the 
 well-born writer, for I would not willingly 
 betray his noble confidence the letter might 
 have been delivered at the door of your lodge, 
 by secretary or serving-man, and sent up 
 through the beaten road of common corres- 
 pondence. No, Master Porter, no ! and good 
 day to you." 
 
 " Nay, nay, go not away in pique or un- 
 kindness, good dame," said the porter, alarmed 
 at the threatened loss of his vails, and laying a 
 gentle hand on his companion's cloak, with a 
 wheedling look and a forced chuckle, as he 
 added, " by the bones of the eleven thousand ! 
 I wish to do the good turn you ask me. A 
 prince did you not say, or at least a noble of 
 note eh ? and " 
 
 *' Well then, at once, and without words," 
 said his companion briskly, at the same time 
 B 3 
 
10 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 placing a small gold piece in his palm, which 
 surely had itched intensely during the previous 
 colloquy, " at once and for all, will you or will 
 you not put this letter into the hands of the 
 duchess, now, at the instant ?" 
 
 " Reckon on me, as soon as ever the proces- 
 sion passes," whispered the porter, putting the 
 letter between his doublet and pourpoint, and 
 closing his fingers on the piece of gold. 
 
 44 Good fellow, you know not the danger of 
 delay, or you would not prose and chatter in 
 this guise. There is another ducat to quicken 
 your senses now, on the instant, give the let- 
 ter with your own hands, and remember ! a 
 keen eye is watching you. Here they come 
 farewell ! we shall meet again." 
 
 As these words were rapidly uttered, and 
 while the speaker darted away in the crowd, 
 with the activity of boyhood, and (as Karl 
 Kreutzer, the conscientious porter, piously 
 swore) with the suddenly-acquired height of 
 well-grown manhood, he felt his breath to come 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 11 
 
 and go ; and his eyes swam, and his knees 
 shook, for he thought that voice, air, and ges- 
 ture were all supernaturally awful. A pang 
 seemed shot through his heart, from the mere 
 vicinage of the letter. To have relieved him- 
 self, he would have thrown it into the street, 
 and the money along with it, had not a sudden 
 throb of fear held one hand firm on the myste- 
 rious paper, and an occult instinct of avarice 
 thrust the other into the deep, wide pocket of 
 his crimson plush pluderhosen. 
 
 While he stood bewildered and uncertain, 
 the loud crash of music and the chant of voices 
 told him the procession was near at hand. The 
 rush of people in all directions warned him of it 
 in another sense. And the boisterous entreaties 
 for admission into the lodge, from several per- 
 sons who pushed towards the portal, were the 
 completing proofs that he had no time to lose. 
 
 " Do, good Master Karl ?" 
 
 " Kind Karl, one place in the postern win- 
 dow r 
 
12 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 " Just enough room for this child, worthy 
 Master Kreutzer !" 
 
 " 'Tis only me, Karl, your friend Caspar 
 Schott, don't you know me ?" 
 
 " Good Karl Kreutzer"" Gentle Karl" 
 " Sweet Master Karl !" 
 
 These and a dozen still more coaxing blan- 
 dishments were forcibly showered upon the 
 agitated functionary ; but every epithet in 
 honour of his tenderness met a practical refu- 
 tation, in the sturdy blows dealt round by his 
 baton of office, and the maledictions which he 
 profusely scattered among the invaders. 
 
 " May the curse of the three kings light on 
 and blight ye all, scurvy rabble that ye are ! 
 Stand back, I say ! Out on ye, knaves, out on 
 ye ! Potss tausend ! Begone I say no man 
 enters here. Thunder and lightning ! aback, 
 aback, I say f 
 
 And having at length succeeded in stemming 
 the living torrent, Karl Kreutzer forcibly 
 closed the pondrous gates, and for perfect se- 
 
AGNKS DE MANSFELDT. 13 
 
 curity against intrusion he fastened the iron 
 chain across ; then wiping the plentiful moisture 
 from his brow, adjusting his disordered and 
 loose-fitting habiliments, and shaking himself 
 into his place again, as it might be said, he has- 
 tily mounted the broad stone stair-case, bethink- 
 ing him of what excuse he might best make for 
 demanding short and instant speech with the 
 Duchess of Saxe-Coburg. The most plausible 
 was the pretext of some alms-asking suppliant 
 pressing forward a petition on urgent need. 
 The heavy-headed porter could invent no bet- 
 ter on such short notice ; and such was the 
 reason assigned for praying the princess to come 
 forth, when, in virtue of his old prescriptive 
 right of admission, he obsequiously entered the 
 great gallery, and approached the balcony 
 where the four ladies were standing. 
 
 Anne of Saxe Coburg started, with a feeling 
 of instinctive alarm, when Karl Kreutzer clum- 
 sily stammered forth his untoward request. 
 
 " Nay, duchess ! think not of it now 
 
14 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 the procession comes it enters the Kirch- 
 gasse in a few minutes it will be here." 
 
 "Good Karl, thou hast ill-timed this intrusion 
 on her highness," said the two daughters of 
 Baron Kriechlingen, speaking together, but 
 dividing those words between them. 
 
 " Dear young ladies, oppose me not," said 
 Karl, with solemn agitation and a stupidly im- 
 portant air, enough to betray any secret to 
 more suspicious observers. " Let her worship- 
 ful highness the duchess come out to receive 
 the letter that is to say the petition which 
 the prince the pauper I mean would lay in 
 her own gracious hand. It is of pressing im- 
 port, believe me, ladies." 
 
 " I know it : I feel it to be so !" exclaimed 
 the duchess, with a suppressed and heavy tone ; 
 and so saying, she stepped to the anti-room be- 
 yond the gallery, where Karl immediately and 
 stealthily slipped the letter into her hand, with- 
 out saying a word, and then hurried away, 
 thanking Heaven that he had eased his bosom of 
 
AGNES DE MA1NSFELDT. 15 
 
 " the perilous stuff" which had lain so heavily 
 on it for the previous ten minutes. 
 
 The duchess tore open the ribbon-clasped 
 envelope, and read the following words : " I 
 shall be at the procession to-day ; know me 
 not ! At thy deep and deadly risk be the ha- 
 zard of a recognition. " 
 
 " Oh God !" exclaimed the princess, the 
 colour flying from her cheeks and lips, as her 
 sinking heart convulsively drew in the life- 
 blood from every artery of her frame, " is lie 
 then here ? Am I nowhere safe ?" 
 
 She sunk on a cushioned bench that stood 
 closely by, and might have fainted, had not 
 the quick steps of her young and impatient 
 hostesses coming to seek her, startled her into 
 life again. Hurriedly thrusting the warning 
 billet into the bosom of her dress, she tottered 
 inwards and reached the balcony, as though 
 attracted by an irresistible spell. Fortunately 
 for her secret wishes neither of the sisters per- 
 ceived her emotion. They thought only of the 
 
16 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 coming procession, and leaned anxiously over 
 the balustrade to mark it, as it turned the cor- 
 ner and entered the open space between their 
 father's house and the church. But another, 
 and a far differently constituted person, was at 
 hand, to catch every shade which secret suffer- 
 ing threw over the fair face of the young du- 
 chess, and to feel, in the purest depths of friend- 
 ship, the reflected gloom from the sorrows of 
 her she loved. This person was Agnes de 
 Mansfeldt. 
 
 Anne of Saxony, wife of a sovereign duke, 
 daughter of an electoral prince, and grand- 
 daughter of a king, for her mother was a prin- 
 cess of Denmark, was of more elevated rank, 
 but scarcely of prouder lineage than the chosen 
 and dear-loved friend of her youth, the heroine 
 of our tale., T Agnes was of a family conspicu- 
 
 ous among the m'ost- distinguished of Germany. 
 The race of Mansfeldt reckoned among its 
 members an emperor, a count-palatine,* solera*! 
 minor princes, with archbishops and bishops 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 17 
 
 innumerable; and many were their intermar- 
 riages with the royal houses of Europe. The 
 pretensions of this proud family were of the 
 highest order. They signed themselves counts, 
 " by the grace of God," and pushed to the ut- 
 most their title to " right divine/' They had 
 maintained for ages fierce and independent 
 wars with their neighbours, ravaged the ter- 
 ritories of their enemies, quarrelled with their 
 friends, fell out among each other, and proved 
 therij|elves, in short, to be in all ways deserving 
 of high note among the worthies of that mon- 
 strous anomaly in social relations, known by 
 the name of the feudal system. 
 
 But whatever might have been their power 
 or their pretensions in elder days, both had ra- 
 pidly declined in the course of the 16th cen- 
 tury. As their revenues diminished, their debts 
 accumulated ; they were often obliged to sell, 
 at great loss, their lands and offices of state, to 
 satisfy -their creditors, and improvidence and 
 misrule seem to have been handed down as heir- 
 
AGNES DE MAXSFELDT. 
 
 looms from generation to generation. At the 
 accession of Count John George, the father of 
 Agnes, his hereditary debts amounted to two 
 millions of florins, and his entire dominions 
 were sequestered. He was, like most of his 
 race, extravagant ; and the desperation of his 
 fortunes tended, perhaps, to make him even 
 more reckless than the rest. He embraced the 
 tenets of Luther, to whom he was well known. 
 !That stalwart reformer tells us in his works 
 that he had severely remonstrated with the 
 count for the prodigality of his career. And 
 it is recorded, that the pastor of Wittemberg 
 (on one of those domiciliary visits), having en- 
 tered the castle of Mansfeldt, and being about 
 to mount the stairs, observed that the steps 
 were flooded with wine. On inquiring the 
 cause, he learned that the count was carousing 
 with his friends, on which Luther cast his looks 
 towards heaven, and raising his hands with 
 gesture suiting his usual bold and- vigorous 
 eloquence, he prophecied that such profusion 
 
AGNES DE MANSVELDT. 19 
 
 could not go unpunished, but that the time was 
 not distant when the grass would grow in the 
 desert halls, which then witnessed such criminal 
 excess. 
 
 Alas, for our heroine, that the foretelling of 
 the great reformer should have been so well 
 deserved and so soon fulfilled ! Her brave, 
 but too prodigal, parent had ere long little left 
 him but a good weapon and a dauntless heart. 
 He chose from the castle armoury its greatest 
 treasure and the boast of his line, the sword of 
 the celebrated Count Hoyers bade farewell to 
 the valley of Mansfeldt, in Upper Thuringia, 
 his birth-place and the seat of his fathers for 
 countless ages fought long and gallantly, un- 
 der the celebrated Maurice of Saxony for the 
 cause of religious liberty, and thus redeeming 
 his errors, died at length, the founder of the 
 JEislebischen, or Lutheran race, leaving to his 
 three sons little but their titles, and to his only 
 daughter the painful heritage of a proud name 
 steeped in the bitterness of poverty. 
 
20 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 Fortuneless, but not friendless, the young 
 and most beautiful Agness had many offers of 
 protection, and numberless invitations from her 
 high and mighty connexions. Of these she 
 availed herself insomuch as pride and prudence 
 told her was becoming. Anne of Saxony, the 
 niece of Maurice, her father's companion in 
 arms, was the first to fly to her orphan friend, 
 and the most zealously cordial in offers of a 
 home, more suiting a young and lovely girl 
 than the drear halls of Mansfeldt Castle. Agnes 
 frankly accepted the offers so generously made. 
 She had no qualms of spurious delicacy. The 
 mind that is imbued with the genuine sort 
 knows not the counterfeit ; and the mind of 
 Agnes but that must be judged of by the 
 sequel. 
 
 When the Princess Anne yielding to the 
 warm solicitings of John Casimir, Duke of Saxe- 
 Coburg, and to the commands of her father, 
 Augustus, Elector of Saxony married too 
 hastily for her future happiness, and left the 
 
AGNES BE MANSFELDT. 21 
 
 life-stirring palaces of Dresden for her hus- 
 band's solitary castle, Agnes de Mansfeldt was 
 not long in choosing her career. 
 
 She envied not the seemingly auspicious fate 
 of her friend, even though she felt it was never 
 likely to be her own. Marriage was a state 
 that appeared beyond the accidents of her des- 
 tiny. Not that she wanted suitors she had 
 too many for her own peace but from reasons, 
 or rather feelings, to be developed as We go on, 
 she saw in each new offer fresh causes for re- 
 jection. 
 
 At length, from a peculiar reason which shall 
 be in its place explained, she solemnly decided 
 never to marry, and she followed up the unna- 
 tural resolution by the best security permitted 
 by her religion. The teasing suit of lovers with 
 whom she felt no sympathy was not to be en- 
 dured. Her heart was too honest to feign af- 
 fection too generous to betray indifference so 
 she resolved to put herself in sanctuary, and 
 escape the double embarrassment. She there- 
 
22 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 fore sought and obtained an appointment as 
 canoness of the Protestant convent of Gerris- 
 heim. Under a vow of celibacy for one year, 
 and renewable at pleasure for the same period, 
 she escaped the annoyance of her suitors' ad- 
 dresses. She returned once more to Mansfeldt 
 as the mistress of its comparative desolation, 
 sharing its solitude with her brothers., who in- 
 habited it by turns, or together, as their ca- 
 prices suggested or their pursuits required ; 
 protected, guided, and instructed by the old 
 chaplain and faithful friend of the house, Cyri- 
 acus Spangenberg, the disciple of Luther, and 
 the associate of Melancthon in some of his most 
 important theological works, particularly the 
 celebrated " Confession of Augsburg." 
 
 The duties of canoness of a Protestant con- 
 vent were rather nominal than rigid. They 
 required no residence within the walls. They 
 entailed no ceremonies beyond them, they car- 
 ried no prohibitions of any of the decent and 
 rational pleasures of life which are sanctioned 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 23 
 
 by social forms, with the exception of matri- 
 mony for some given period, and that we wil- 
 lingly allow is a state which embraces many of 
 those, and sanctifies them all. 
 
 A yearly pension was attached to the title, 
 and a small cross, embroidered on velvet or 
 ribbon, was worn on the left side of the bosom 
 by a crimson string, a simple and sacred deco- 
 ration, unstained with the deep vanities of many 
 a more glaring badge. 
 
 Agnes had rarely availed herself of her privi- 
 lege of social enjoyment, during the year of her 
 engagement, which was nearly expired, when 
 her relatives, Fredolinda and Emma Von 
 Kriechlingen, pressingly invited her to visit 
 them at Cologne, to participate in some of the 
 gaieties prepared for the period of the congress, 
 and to meet her dear-loved friend the Duchess 
 of Saxe-Coburg, who had honoured them by de- 
 manding a few weeks' hospitality, on condition of 
 every point of ceremony and etiquette connected 
 with her rank being laid aside, and her visit 
 
24 AGNES DE MANSFELPT. 
 
 being considered as one of friendship and not of 
 form. 
 
 The last inducement, and a pressing letter 
 from the duchess, decided Agnes to accept the 
 summons. The friends met (for the first time 
 since the marriage of Anne, two years pre- 
 viously) on their arrival in Cologne the day be- 
 fore the one on which our story opens. And 
 what a world of mutual confidence did they not, 
 during that day and the night which closed on 
 it, pour into each others breasts ! But the 
 procession? It has long since reached Saint 
 Columba^s platz, and now halts at a reposoir, 
 or temporary altar, erected in advance of the 
 church portal, and consequently fronting the 
 mansion of Baron Von Kriechlingen. 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 25 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 A ROMAN Catholic procession, like all the 
 ceremonies of that gorgeous church, is fitted 
 to excite the feelings in no moderate degree. It 
 must be either profound veneration or deep con- 
 tempt, which animates the orthodox assistant, 
 or inspires the heretic spectator. No one who 
 sees the spectacle can be wholly indifferent to it. 
 It is an offering worthy of Heaven, or a rite 
 degrading to common sense. God is honoured, 
 or man debased. The true attributes of reli- 
 gion are to be defined. There is no medium 
 line. Enthusiasm and reason take conflicting 
 sides of the question, and in such a case what 
 rational mind stands neutral ? 
 
 VOL. i. c 
 
ZO AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 Varied were the sensations raised on the oc- 
 casion before us, in the numerous population 
 of Cologne and its surrounding hamlets and 
 villages, which had all poured out their vota- 
 ries. The great majority were pious Catholics; 
 but reform had made a progress in the electo- 
 rate quite correspondent to that in all the 
 southern parts of Germany. Lutheranism had 
 a large body of adherents ; and the more rigid 
 doctrines of Calvinism attracted, by a fascinat- 
 ing charm, many an overwrought fanatic to 
 join that withering sect. 
 
 On occasions like the present, most of those 
 who disapproved of or were shocked by the ce- 
 remony abstained from sanctioning it, even in 
 appearance, by their presence. But several of 
 those who could not join it as a duty, viewed 
 it, as it passed their dwellings, as they would 
 a theatrical exhibition ; and all who did, from 
 piety or policy, take a part, entered into it 
 with an energy that evidently sprung from con- 
 viction or very successfully assumed its tone. 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 27 
 
 No efforts were spared to render those displays 
 imposingly effective, at a period when zeal for 
 the new doctrines strained the resisting sinews 
 of Romish prerogative to their utmost stretch ; 
 and the procession of the 5th April, 1579, is 
 recorded as eclipsing in sumptuous profusion 
 all former outlays of magnificence in Cologne. 
 
 We will not fatigue our readers, nor retard 
 our story, by a detailed description of matters 
 which fancy can easily conjure up. Banners, 
 tapers, relics ; rich costumes, music, flowers, 
 and incense ; all that could take the senses by 
 surprise, or soothingly lead them into sympa- 
 thy, were prodigally and skilfully brought into 
 play. The treasures and triumphs of near two 
 hundred churches, and half as many convents, 
 under the escort of above two thousand priests 
 of various ranks and denominations, testified to 
 the accumulated wealth of the archiepiscopal 
 city.. Long files of magistrates, in rich attire, 
 gave evidence of its corporate piety ; and se- 
 veral thousand beggars walking in serried ranks 
 c2 
 
28 AGNES DE MAXSFELDT. 
 
 in the tail of the procession, told that conven- 
 tual and civic charity must have both been 
 great, at once to tolerate and support such a 
 legion of sloth within its walls. 
 
 The superbly tapestried and embroidered 
 awning, under which the consecrated Eucharist 
 was carried, now stood still before the reposoir. 
 The "innocents'" (as the juvenile choiristers were 
 called) and the full-grown singers had ceased 
 their chant. The short service appropriated to 
 those haltings was in the act of being recited by 
 one of the officiating bishops ; and the crowd of 
 glittering costumes, lay and clerical, which sur- 
 rounded the main group dazzled the eyes of the 
 spectators, and filled many of those who gazed 
 down upon the scene with burning curiosity, to 
 know by name the various individuals by which 
 it was composed. Our group was not wanting 
 in this natural feeling of the occasion, and, as 
 satirists say, this natural failing of the sex. It 
 needs not be told, that it was modified in indi- 
 vidual cases according to the characters of the 
 
AGNES DE MAXSFELDT. 29 
 
 four bright and youthful beings who adorned 
 the balcony. While the two sisters panted with 
 that girlish love of novelty, merely because it 
 was such, common we suppose to all who have 
 but just been freed from the restraint of con- 
 ventual education, the two friends who had been 
 longer in the world and had known more of its 
 ways, were touched with an interest in the event 
 which embraced such serious associations of 
 thought, and in the distinguished agents on 
 whom its management devolved. 
 
 Yet far different feelings filled the two bo- 
 soms, whose sympathies on this occasion, as in 
 most others, were so congenial, but whose sen- 
 sations were so varied. Agnes was in her nine- 
 teenth year, Anne in her one-and-twentieth. 
 The former had known the anxieties of life, the 
 latter its temptations. One had been reared amid 
 difficulties and trials, the other in the very lap 
 of ease and luxury. The first felt the circum- 
 stances of her station to be unworthy of her ; 
 the second knew that she was unsuited to the 
 
OU AGNES DE MANSFELDT, 
 
 place she occupied, but which she could not be 
 said to fill. Agnes, from the earliest epoch of 
 mature intelligence, had felt marriage and its 
 mighty maze of delights and duties to be im- 
 possibilities for her. Anne, from her youngest 
 days, had been taught that a wedded esta- 
 blishment was in her case an invincible necessity. 
 Fate had seemed to vow one to a state of celi- 
 bacy, humiliating to loveliness, high intellect, 
 and exquisite susceptibility of happiness ; while 
 destiny threw the other into an union that 
 promised rapture and brought forth misery. 
 Agnes's heart had hitherto known but the re- 
 straints of suppressed emotion. That of Anne 
 had felt the chill of blighted hope. Agnes's 
 worst suffering had been wounded pride ; her 
 friend had endured the pangs of crushed affec- 
 tion. 
 
 It has been already shewn that the Duchess 
 of Saxe-Coburg had some secret cause of 
 mental pain, of which Agnes had received a 
 partial confidence the previous day. But she 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 31 
 
 knew nothing of the mysterious warning of 
 which we have informed our readers. There- 
 fore she felt not, even by sympathy, the agita- 
 tion of her friend ; but if not to the full as 
 anxious (for no one can make the case of another 
 absolutely their own) she certainly looked more 
 so ; for her countenance was always the true re- 
 flection of a mind of almost unequalled single- 
 ness and sincerity ; while Anne, on the contrary, 
 had a command of feature and a flexibility of 
 tone, that allowed her to wear a smile or feign 
 a laugh, when the spring that set one in mo- 
 tion, or the chords that attuned the other, had 
 their workings in the very depths of an anguished 
 heart. Thy both fixed their looks intently on 
 the picturesque crowd beneath ; and, no matter 
 what their separate feelings, they could not re- 
 sist the influence of the imposing scene. 
 
 At this moment, a young man, in the uniform 
 of the university of Bonn, announced by a ser- 
 vant as Herr Ulrick Von Leckenstein, advanced 
 along the gallery, and modestly approaching 
 
32 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 the window which opened into the balcony, he 
 was urgently beckoned forward by his kinswo- 
 men Fredolinda and Emma. 
 
 " Welcome, welcome Ulrick !" exclaimed 
 the latter, who was the younger of the two, 
 " we never were so glad to see you, or wished 
 for you so much did we, Freda ?" 
 
 Her sister, to whom this question was ad- 
 dressed, blushed deeply as she replied that 
 " Cousin Ulrick was always welcome, and that 
 he certainly had arrived opportunely to tell 
 them the names of the personages below." She 
 then muttered an introduction to the duchess 
 and Agnes, but in so confused a way. that the 
 young stranger might have easily confounded 
 one with the other, had not the virgin badge 
 of the canoness told him the distinction. 
 
 " Nay, nay, Ulrick, come forward, 11 cried 
 the lively and impatient Emma; "this is al- 
 ways the way with you and Freda. Ye stand 
 blushing and stammering at each other, like 
 children saying their catechism. Come close to 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 33 
 
 us. The duchess and Countess Agnes want 
 you to tell us the names of all those great 
 people, who look so lowly, yet think so highly 
 all the while. Now, quickly run over all the 
 names and point out the persons," continued 
 she, as Ulrick advanced and placed himself, 
 from respect, close to the duchess, and, from 
 a feeling full as pure and ten times as profound, 
 as far away as possible from the blooming girl 
 he loved, with the fear and trembling of boy- 
 hood. 
 
 " That venerably cunning-looking old man 
 in the middle, in those superb robes, is of course 
 the nuncio ?" asked Emma. 
 
 ' Yes, that is John Baptiste Costagna, Arch- 
 bishop of Rossano, and the Pope^s nuncio, 
 sent by his Holiness, Gregory XIII. to take care 
 of his innocent flock of Cologne, now there 
 are so many heretical wolves close to the 
 fold." 
 
 " Take care, for Heaven's sake, Ulrick," 
 said Fredolinda ; " do not smile when you make 
 c 3 
 
34 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 those observations, for you know our house is 
 marked among the heresies ; and perhaps one 
 of the electors themselves might by chance turn 
 his looks this way."" 
 
 " I declare one of them has his eyes fixed on 
 us already," exclaimed Emma. " Which of the 
 archbishops is that Ulrick ? is it our Sovereign 
 or his Eminence of Treves, for they say that 
 both are in the procession ?" 
 
 " I don't like to stare at him be it which it 
 may," replied Ulrick, avoiding to look directly 
 at the place occupied by the two prince pre- 
 lates. "But you may be sure that his High- 
 ness, John of Treves, is too pious to turn even 
 one stray glance on the dangerous temptations 
 of this balcony." 
 
 " Then it is our own liege lord, whom I 
 have been so long longing to see. His eyes are 
 fixed on us like burning-glasses I hope he is 
 not angry with us." 
 
 " Never fear, Emma, his highness can feel 
 nothing but regard for whatever is here. You 
 
AGNES DE MA.NSFELDT. 35 
 
 know he is your father's stanch friend, and you 
 must have heard enough to believe that the 
 sight of beauty is not likely to move him to 
 wrath." 
 
 " Really, Ulrick, your college course so near 
 his highness 1 residence has taught you some of 
 his gallantry. How he stares at us ! I wonder 
 if he is praying like the other two archbishops, 
 who gaze so intently on that great golden 
 crucifix ?" 
 
 Ulrick gave a moment's look towards the 
 elector, and then, with an arch expression, and 
 fixing his eyes on Agnes, he said in his pecu- 
 liar sly, dry manner 
 
 " In truth I believe his highness is at his de- 
 votions, and, like his venerable colleagues, the 
 cross seems to be the object of his fascina- 
 tion.' 1 
 
 Agnes felt her face and neck glow, and she 
 involuntarily cast down her looks and turned 
 her head aside ; for she could not now fail to 
 perceive that the ardent eyes of the splendidly 
 
36 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 attired and princely-looking personage in ques- 
 tion were rivetted upon her. 
 
 Fredolinda had silently enjoyed what she 
 considered the very graceful and rather witty 
 remarks of her cousin. How little critical is 
 the heart towards those it loves ! Duchess Anne 
 had neither heard what passed, nor observed 
 the important person whose attentive scrutiny 
 had been the subject of what was said. Her 
 anxious looks had darted into the throng below, 
 and wandered electrically through it. But she 
 did not distinguish the face, the fear of seeing 
 which so irresistibly attracted her piercing 
 gaze ; for it is in the very essence of fear to 
 make its victims hearken for the sounds 
 that shock them, or seek the objects they 
 abhor. 
 
 " Well, truly the elector is of a striking 
 air, he seems fitter for a soldier than a priest, 
 methinks," observed I redolinda. 
 
 " He is celebrated for his conquests," said 
 Ulrick. 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 3? 
 
 " Nay, cousin, there is satire in all you say 
 of his highness," exclaimed Fredolinda. 
 
 "What is that, Ulrick ?" briskly asked 
 Emma. " Satire ? oh ! pray say it again I 
 love satire in my heart.*" 
 
 " Because you have no reason to fear it, my 
 pretty cousin," said the student. 
 
 " Thanks, most learned and accomplished 
 Herr, 1% said Emma, with mock gravity and 
 courtesying low. " Verily, your studies are 
 completed, you are quite fit to take your de- 
 gree you pay compliments like a conjuror." 1 ' 
 
 " A conjuror !" exclaimed the Duchess of 
 Coburg. " Who ? where ? what did you say ?"" 
 and as she rapidly put the questions she looked 
 around in startled alarm, as if unconscious of 
 their utterance. 
 
 Agnes alone observed deeper than the sur- 
 face of this incoherent manner. She threw a 
 look of keen affection on her friend. The latter 
 instantly recovered herself, smiled bewitchingly, 
 and addressing Ulrick, told him, " She hoped 
 
38 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 he had not practised any too serious conjura- 
 tions on her young friend Emma." 
 
 " On me !" exclaimed the light-hearted girl, 
 laughing outright, and so loud that her sister 
 and friends were filled with alarm, lest it might 
 attract the notice of the crowd below ;c on 
 me r repeated she, indifferent to their appre- 
 hensions. " No, your highness, Herr Ulrick 
 does not consider me worthy of his spells it is 
 Freda he practises on ; but I think he is some- 
 times caught in his own snare, for one seems 
 as much bewitched as the other. Not to speak 
 profanely, it reminds me of the old proverb, 
 quoted by Chaplain Spangenberg at breakfast 
 this morning, of the devil being tricked by 
 Sathanus." 
 
 " For shame, for shame, Emma !'' said Fre~ 
 dolinda, in most tale-telling confusion, *' you 
 speak too lightly on serious subjects you make 
 too free with names I do not mean mine or 
 cousin Ulrick's, but but " 
 
 " That most respectable potentate the king 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 39 
 
 of darkness, is it not sister ?" and another laugh 
 followed this commentary on poor Freda's con- 
 fused reproaches, at which even the duchess 
 and Agnes smiled, though not " righte mer- 
 rilie disposed," as the old chroniclers at times 
 represent their happy heroines. Young Ulrick, 
 who was ready enough in repartee or remark 
 on common subjects, seemed absolutely stulti- 
 fied whenever he was placed, in presence of 
 others, by any means, in juxtaposition with his 
 heart's idol. He now stood silently, and with 
 the look of a criminal whose conscience will not 
 suffer him to plead not guilty. 
 
 " Thou art a happy and a giddy creature, 
 Emma," said the duchess, with a heavy sigh, 
 which was far less the breath of envy than of 
 self-conscious comparison. 
 
 " I know I am, dear Duchess Anne, I con- 
 fess my errors ; and only wish Martin Luther, 
 Pastor Spangenberg, and the rest of our reve- 
 rend reformers, had not preached down indul- 
 gences, when they preached up heresy. I am 
 
40 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 sure that I, and Ulrick, and Freda, and many 
 such sinners " 
 
 ' Emma, Emma ! I must stop that wild- 
 going tongue of thine. Remember that our 
 dear father and the venerable chaplain of Mans- 
 feldt are closetted in the book-room close by, 
 and were they to catch these irreverend 
 words " 
 
 " Nay, Freda, I must interrupt in my turn, 
 aye, and reprove too ! this is hypocrisy, sister of 
 mine, and shifting on the shoulders of thy 
 neighbours what is, mayhap, too heavy for 
 thine own. My father and our reverend old 
 guest are so closely shut up together and thou 
 knowest it that neither sight nor sound can 
 enter, lest the abominations of this grand ce- 
 remony might shock their eyes or ears." 
 
 " Hark ! v said Freda, " the little bell rings 
 again ; and see the surpliced boys are throwing 
 up the silver incensories towards Heaven. How 
 beautiful is that perfumed vapour floating on 
 the air ! How sublime that living mass, bowing 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 41 
 
 down at once to the earth ! How impressive that 
 faint, tinkling sound, amid the stillness of the 
 crowd f 
 
 " How much more odorous, and beautiful, 
 and solemn, the offering of a single heart, in 
 loneliness and silence, without parade or pa- 
 geantry ! at least so I have been taught, and 
 so I feel," said Agnes, turning aside and ab- 
 ruptly checking the animated discussion she 
 felt herself inadvertently led into. 
 
 " And I too," rejoined Freda ; " that is my 
 creed also, dear Agnes, when I do not look on 
 those exciting spectacles. But they carry me 
 away I know not why or wherefore." 
 
 " You are an enthusiast, Freda." 
 
 " Perhaps so ; but look down on those thou- 
 sands, see how they are all absorbed alike, rich 
 and poor, young and old !" 
 
 " With the exception of our dread sove- 
 reign, yonder/ 1 said Emma ; " for he still stares 
 at us, as if this balcony was heaven itself, I 
 am sure he takes us for angels. He has abso- 
 
4Z AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 lutely forgotten to kneel down, while all the 
 rest bend to the very rushes that cover the 
 dust." 
 
 " If common report be truth, 'tis not the first 
 nor the fiftieth time that gallantry has made 
 him forget religion," said Ulrick. 
 
 " What a shame, for so old a man and a 
 prelate !" exclaimed Emma. 
 
 ' What a pity rather that the same indivi- 
 dual should ever be prince and priest together, 
 the prescription of one station running counter 
 to the duties of the other !" observed Agnes. 
 
 " Falls in love ! oh, shocking ! v uttered 
 Emma, in reply to some whispered remark of 
 her cousin. 
 
 " Poor man ! perhaps he cannot help it," 
 said Freda, in a tone of half languishing sym- 
 pathy, that made her sister laugh once more, 
 and all the others smile again. 
 
 " The procession is preparing to move on. 
 Pray, Herr Von Leckenstein, can you be so 
 good as to name those seigneurs who stand close 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 43 
 
 to the prelates? they are the other commis- 
 sioners, no doubt ?" asked the duchess. 
 
 " They are so, madam," replied the young 
 student, moving close beside her, and mention- 
 ing the names of the most prominent members 
 of the conference ; coupling with each some 
 quaint remark, that often made the duchess 
 smile, and all through fixed her attention to 
 what he uttered. While he talked as if inspired 
 by the honour of such close intercourse with a 
 lady of such high rank and such rare beauty, 
 she listened as though she had altogether re- 
 covered from her late anxiety. 
 
 In this way Ulrick passed in review the 
 Dukes of Terranova and Arschot (the repre- 
 sentative of Philip II. of Spain and Mathias 
 the Archduke of the Netherlands) the Bishop 
 of Wurtzburg, Count Otto of Schwartzemburg, 
 
 and a long train of noble, reverend, legal, and 
 
 
 
 literary functionaries, the greater part of whom 
 he knew by name ; and even when he did not, 
 he was rarely at a loss for trait of invention, 
 
44 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 encouraged by the amusement he seemed to 
 afford his fair listeners. 
 
 Freda, influenced it might be by slight pique 
 or passing jealousy at her lover's attention to 
 another, gave the least notice to his observations, 
 and seemed overpowered by the imposing gran- 
 deur of the spectacle, and the pious or proud 
 bearing, as it might be, of the chief actors in it. 
 As few of those persons have more than the 
 floating interest of the moment, either in our 
 memory or iu the progress of our tale, we pass 
 by the various observations they called forth, 
 as well as a minute description of their persons. 
 One of them, however, being paramount in our 
 consideration, we must record one passage more 
 of the irregular conversation that related to him. 
 
 The head of the procession had moved away, 
 and was lost in the narrow street that led from 
 the platz, or square of Saint Columba. Ulrick 
 was continuing his strain of lively remarks on 
 each new passer by, and had now descended 
 from the rank of princedom and nobility to the 
 
AGNES I)E MANSFELDT. 45 
 
 files of burgher aristocracy which had suc- 
 ceeded them. His four listeners seemed think- 
 ing only of his strictures on the corporation 
 pride, or factious perversity, of these citizens, 
 when Agnes suddenly asked him, 
 
 " Pray what is his age at present ?" 
 
 "Whose age, madam?" demanded Ulrick, 
 surprised at the abrupt and irrelevant question. 
 
 " Oh, the archbishop's " 
 
 " Fair countess, there were three in the pro- 
 cession." 
 
 " Well, well, the elector's ?" 
 
 " Madam you must fain remember that two 
 prince-electors walked side by side just now.' 1 
 
 " I mean your own sovereign, Herr Ulrick ; 
 but the question was one of mere curiosity 
 'tis of no matter.'" 
 
 " Really, Agnes, if that said sovereign of 
 ours paid you homage, you seem to have sworn 
 him allegiance. His exclusive looks are an- 
 swered by exclusive thoughts," said Emma, 
 with an expression that would have been mali- 
 
46 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 cious, if so kind a heart or so pretty a face as 
 her's could have suggested or expressed any 
 thing unamiable. Ulrick, wishing to relieve 
 Agnes from a raillery which evidently embar- 
 rassed her, answered her question. 
 
 " Our elector reckoned thirty -seven summers 
 last August, according to the calendar, but is 
 at least a dozen less in character and habits, if 
 hearsay belie him not." 
 
 " Thirty-seven only ! and is this what Emma 
 calls so old a man ? I should have thought 
 him older,* observed Duchess Anne. 
 
 " You did not mark him closely,* said 
 Agnes ; " he appeared to me younger." 
 
 " In truth," rejoined the duchess, " I looked 
 more at his sumptuous garments than at him, 
 and not much at either, for my eye sought 
 another object." 
 
 " And, happily I should think, did not find 
 it, dearest Anne," whispered Agnes, pressing 
 her friend's hand tenderly. 
 
 " My own, my best friend! no one knows 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 4*7 
 
 me like you," replied the duchess, in the same 
 tone, returning the pressure, and involuntarily 
 expressing in her looks the heart's pain which 
 sympathy softens but cannot neutralize. " Oh, 
 Agnes," continued she, " how I long to unbur- 
 then rny breast to you wholly !" 
 
 " We shall soon find a time/' replied Agnes, 
 turning away towards the sisters and the stu- 
 dent, lest they might observe the duchess's 
 emotion, and also from her interest in the sub- 
 ject they continued to discuss the appearance 
 and character of the archbishop. 
 
 " Oh, the latter certainly, 11 said Freda, in 
 reply to Ulrick's question, whether she thought 
 the subject of their remark had more the bear- 
 ing of a pious prelate or a proud prince ? " He 
 wore his mitre as if it were a crown, and he had 
 none of that air of mock or real humility which 
 sat so ill on the other two. While his com- 
 manding figure, though encumbered by his 
 robe, and not more than the middle height ' 
 Rather under it," said Ulrick. 
 
48 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 " Indeed ! I should have said above it," ex- 
 claimed Agnes. 
 
 " That's only grateful of you Agnes, for you 
 certainly filled a large space in his highnesses 
 eyes," observed Emma, in her half careless, 
 half cunning way. 
 
 " The drapery of his vestments, and the 
 form of his mitre, add apparently to his stature," 
 said Ulrick, not regarding Emma's words or 
 looks, and as if glad to interpose between them 
 and Agnes, whose natural fine colour received 
 a deeper tinge, from every passing breeze of her 
 young relative's raillery. 
 
 " I should rather," said she, " attribute the 
 effect to an innate sense of superiority, which 
 naturally gives the carriage an elevated air ;" 
 and as Agnes uttered the opinion, she inad- 
 vertently illustrated it by a proud, but by no 
 means affected, movement of her whole person, 
 which did not exceed the common height of 
 well-grown womanhood, and which, it may here 
 be added, was a model of delicate yet volup- 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 49 
 
 tuous proportion. The Duchess of Saxe-Coburg 
 was taller, slighter, and, in the common notion, 
 of more dignified mien. Neither of the sisters 
 were quite as tall as Agnes ; but they had re- 
 spectively two or three years to grow up to her 
 stature. To surpass her in graceful elegance of 
 form was only in the compass of a miracle. 
 
 " There is, no doubt, much truth in Countess 
 Agnes's remark," said Ulrick; " the elector is 
 of a great and confident ambition. He noto- 
 riously considers his career a doomed one, and 
 is said to have never yet failed in any object of 
 his life, public or private." 
 
 " A doomed career ? on what grounds ?" 
 asked Freda, caught by the romantic notion. 
 
 " Your highness has no doubt heard the inci- 
 dent of Archbishop Ghebhard's early life ? and 
 Countess Agnes too, perhaps ?" asked the stu- 
 dent, turning to the stranger ladies; they bowed 
 assent. 
 
 "But I have not, Ulrick," said Freda, some- 
 what reproachfully. 
 
 VOL. I. D 
 
50 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 " Nor I," echoed Emma ; " they never told 
 us those heart-stirring stories in the convent. 1 ' 
 
 " Truly, fair cousins," rejoined Ulrick, with 
 a serious and half-dissatisfied tone, " what ye 
 have already heard and seen of his highness and 
 his character seems to have filled your minds 
 altogether." 
 
 " Jealousy, jealousy !" exclaimed Emma, 
 with her usual laugh of most genuine and musi- 
 cal enjoyment. " Cousin Ulrick already jea- 
 lous, and of the old archbishop! Nay, nay, 
 do not look angry, or knit your brows at me, 
 Ulrick. No, nor throw that coaxing leer now, 
 to bribe me to silence it is true it is true ! 
 Cousin Ulrick is jealous of the archbishop !" 
 
 " You had better tell her the story," said 
 Agnes, smiling the while. The duchess did as 
 much. Even Freda enjoyed what she thought 
 a just punishment to her lover; and he, feeling 
 that he looked foolish as well as faulty, agreed 
 with Agnes ; and with a forced laugh endea- 
 vouring to silence the real one he had raised, he 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 51 
 
 related the well-known anecdote, that while 
 Ghebhard Truchses, then only a simple canon 
 just in orders, happening to be present at a fete 
 given at Antwerp to the Archduchess Anne of 
 Austria, and passing under one of the triumphal 
 arches erected in her honour, a scutcheon with 
 the armorial bearings of the Electorate of Co- 
 logne, which with those of the other princes of 
 the empire formed part of the decorations, fell 
 on his hat but without doing any injury. He 
 instantly declared that it was a presage of his 
 future greatness ; and following up the omen, 
 he never paused in his efforts, until, by his 
 talents and the influence of his friends, he ob- 
 tained the important dignity which made the 
 emblazoned honours his own. 
 
 " What a noble character of energy and cou- 
 rage that must be !" exclaimed Freda, glowing 
 with the generous sympathy of an enthusiastic 
 mind. 
 
 "" Did you know a thousandth part of the 
 obstacles that opposed his path, and the dif- 
 
 D2 
 
52 AGNES I>E MANSFELDT. 
 
 ficulties that even now beset him in maintaining 
 his dignity, you would feel even more strongly 
 for him, dear Freda," said Ulrick, catching the 
 impulse which inspired her. 
 
 14 I know he has many enemies in this bigot 
 city. Why does he not come here oftener ?" 
 
 " You have just given the reason. He hates 
 the place, and I might add all in it, with the 
 exception of your father and a few other faith- 
 ful friends." 
 
 66 And therefore he resides at Bonn ?'' 
 
 c * Exactly, where, even, he does not sleep on 
 a bed of roses." 
 
 " You sometimes see the elector at Bonn ?" 
 asked Agnes. 
 
 " He occasionally admits me to the honour 
 of dining at his table. 11 
 
 " You know him personally, then ?" said 
 Agnes ; but she checked the questions that 
 were rising to her lips, recollecting that the 
 laughing eye of Emma was fixed on her, and 
 her tongue still untied. 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 53 
 
 At the same moment Duchess Anne caught 
 her arm with a convulsive grasp, uttering some 
 imperfect exclamation, while she quickly turn- 
 ed her look from the street, and left the balcony 
 in evident agitation. But having found a seat, 
 she instantly recovered herself, and assured 
 her alarmed friends that she had only suffered 
 from a momentary pain in side or head she 
 forgot which, it was so rapidly over. And she 
 insisted and implored that they should all re- 
 sume their places, and observe the conclusion 
 of the procession. 
 
 There was something too serious in her 
 manner to admit of refusal or delay. Agnes 
 and the others stepped back into the balcony, 
 and thence turned their looks again beyond ; 
 nothing remarkable caught their eyes, till in 
 the very closing ranks of the cortege they ob- 
 served a carriage so remarkable in its equip- 
 ment as to excite in the throng around it, an 
 astonishment and curiosity still greater than 
 their own. It was covered with gilding, and 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 so splendidly ornamented that it seemed, with 
 its six milk-white horses and richly- liveried 
 lacqueys, to have been produced by the wand 
 of some enchanter, Cologne had never seen 
 any equipage half so elegant; and it was 
 escorted by twenty mounted cavaliers, all 
 bearing the same distinctive badge and co- 
 lours, which profusely glittered on the vehicle 
 itself. 
 
 Within it reclined, in an attitude of cold dig- 
 nity, as if unconscious of his greatness or in- 
 different to the wonderment it caused, a man, 
 magnificently dressed, of a good person, but a 
 countenance neither handsome nor pleasing, and 
 of about thirty years of age. As his equipage 
 and train defiled under the balcony, he took 
 off his plumed montero cap, rose in his seat, 
 and with easy condescension saluted the group 
 above. They returned his bows by gentle in- 
 clinations of the head ; and silently wondering 
 at this splendid apparition, they followed it 
 with their eyes till it had quite disappeared ; 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 55 
 
 the sounds of the musicians and choiristers 
 gradually dying away in the distance, the 
 crowd silently moving on, and soon leaving St. 
 Columba's platz quite lone and deserted. Then 
 only did the young friends join the duchess, 
 who received them as usual, with forced gaiety 
 and woe-concealing smiles. 
 
56 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 WITHIN a couple of hours following the 
 scene we have just described, the procession had 
 trained its slow length through the principal 
 streets, halted at the several stations, and finally 
 reached the cathedral, that sublime abortion of 
 architectural magnificence, which beginning 
 to crumble ere it could be completed, stands 
 a rare monument of the too ambitious fate of 
 genius ; for the name of him who planned the 
 mighty structure is now as unknown as those 
 of the ignoble artisans who raised its hundred 
 columns, the clustered shafts and flower wreath- 
 ed capitals of which look like the petrified sec- 
 tion of some giant forest. Many another moral 
 
AGNES DE MAKSFELDT. 57 
 
 may be found by those who seek for such, in 
 this vast emblem of sectarian power, stricken 
 midway in its path of pride. And what lessons 
 of taste does it not convey ? not merely to the 
 votary of art who lauds its light-sprung arches, 
 its groined ceilings, its chiselled pillars, or its 
 massive walls, but to the worshipper of nature, 
 who sees even in the corruption of decay such 
 exquisite traces of beauty. There is not a ruin 
 of the Rhine and where do they abound so 
 beautiful as on its banks? that does not tell 
 us, like this mightiest of them all, that time is 
 the true master of the picturesque. He does 
 not sweep in vulgar flight, the common-place 
 devourer of man's triumphs- Even where he 
 destroys he defaces not. Every mark of his 
 tooth leaves a trait of loveliness, every feather 
 of his wing a tint of grace. 
 
 The solemn service of high mass, in which 
 
 the several dignitaries before-named all bore a 
 
 part, had now fitly concluded the ceremonies 
 
 of the day ; the dense masses of spectators 
 
 D 3 
 
58 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 which filled the cathedral gradually melted 
 away into fractional groups ; and appetite, 
 which disperses a crowd quicker than the riot 
 act, and attracts individuals to their homes 
 more surely than any other sense of duty, be- 
 gan to exert its universal influence. Carriages 
 were in waiting at the doors of the holy struc- 
 ture for the several high personages. They all 
 soon reached their various residences. We 
 must accompany him who interests us most, the 
 Elector Ghebhard, and fancy ourselves arrived 
 with him at the old and gloom-inspiring archie- 
 piscopal palace. It must be observed, that as 
 the state carriage conveyed this sovereign 
 through the streets of the chief city though 
 Bonn, as being his residence, was considered 
 the capital no gratulatory shouts or popular 
 compliments gave him escort. Instead of those 
 sounds, the most grateful to the ear of power, 
 the clattering hoofs of his soldier-guard, the 
 rattle of their armour and accoutrements, and 
 the brazen-breath fanfare of noisy trumpets, 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 59 
 
 were the only signals of his progress. Few 
 doffed their caps, or stopped on the way in 
 token of respect ; and even those who did so 
 were more influenced by veneration for the 
 mitre than attachment to the man. But none 
 bowed to him in real reverence, and " not one 
 cried God bless him !" 
 
 The elector seemed little affected by these 
 silent evidences of unpopularity, yet there was 
 at times an involuntary frown on his haughty 
 brow, and his sensual lip was now and then 
 slightly curled, when some rude fellow gave 
 too evident a token of disrespect. As he 
 alighted from his vehicle, and mounted the 
 palace steps with an air of bold authority, a 
 rough voice from one of the bystanders mut- 
 tered some words, of which he caught only the 
 last spoken. 
 
 " A heretic in his heart ; but we shall soon 
 have a true believer in his place. 1 ' 
 
 As Ghebhard caught this plain allusion to his 
 religious principles and open threat against hi& 
 
60 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 authority, he stopped short, sternly fixed his 
 eyes on the speaker, and then, resuming his way, 
 entered the palace porch, and passed on between 
 files of liveried serving-men, into an attendant 
 group of household officers and other members 
 of his princely establishment. 
 
 Scarcely had he disappeared among his train, 
 when the same voice which had uttered the in- 
 sulting words, cried out loudly, 
 
 " Long live Ernest of Bavaria ! Long live 
 the Bishop of Liege !" 
 
 And shouts soon arose, mingled with expres- 
 sions of still more direct sedition. 
 
 " Down with the mitred heretic ! Down 
 with false Ghebhard ! Ernest for ever !" were 
 now the watchwords of riot. The stragglers, 
 who had acted with no premeditated plan, 
 pressed round the portico of the palace ; and 
 he who had begun the tumult led the way, with 
 violent gestures, calling aloud to the others to 
 " follow him and do justice on the tyrant rene- 
 gade within/' 
 
AGNKS DE MAN&FELDT. 61 
 
 At this critical moment the young lieutenant 
 who commanded the elector's cavalry escort 
 ordered his men to charge at once upon the 
 rioters. These were no times for forms of civil 
 ceremony. The sword blade, the lance's point, 
 or the trampling hoofs of the horses, were the 
 warning summonses in the name of the law, for 
 the law was little better than brute force. And 
 sooth to say, the bold burghers of those fighting 
 days did not stand on nice points of etiquette, 
 when they in their turns assailed the hired he- 
 roes of feudality. Bludgeon, and bill, and axe, 
 or any other tool of civil war, were readily 
 grasped and promptly brought into play, in the 
 eternal tumults of the good old times ; and a 
 sudden whack on the morion, a cleft skull, or 
 maimed limb, was often the first notice given 
 to the earliest victim of a popular revolt. 
 
 In the present instance a rapier, guided by a 
 nervous arm, laid its sharp length on the coun- 
 tenance of the rude leader of the mob, before 
 he had time to repeat his war cry ; and a gash 
 
02 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 of most frightful dimensions from brow to chin, 
 gave him wherewithal to remember the day to 
 his life's end, whenever he trimmed his beard 
 or anointed his mustachios before a looking- 
 glass. His unprepared and frightened asso- 
 ciates fled like scattered sheep in all directions. 
 The officer, not liking to risk his troops in the 
 narrow and lane-like streets around, offered no 
 pursuit. The wounded culprit was carried off 
 to prison, and the rest of the city knew nothing 
 of this local accident, for such it was, and no 
 more. 
 
 But the elector, attracted to one of the win- 
 dows by the tumult, had seen the greater part 
 of the transaction ; and he resolved to reward, 
 in his own way, and on the spot, the active ex- 
 ertions of the lieutenant. He ordered him to 
 be brought into his presence ; and the young 
 man, on entering the chamber to which he had 
 retired, found him, with the aid of his valet, 
 throwing off his heavy and thick-embroidered 
 vestments with a careless air. 
 
AGNES BE MANSFELDT. 63 
 
 " So, young sir," said the elector. " How 
 comes it that you, with such slight ceremony. " 
 
 " May it please your highness, they told me 
 to enter. It is not my fault," exclaimed the 
 officer, in alarmed mistake of his sovereign's 
 meaning, and in ignorance of his peculiar 
 manner. 
 
 " Nay, stay where you are. I would talk 
 with you," said the latter, stopping the lieuten- 
 ant's quick movement of retreat. " Why was 
 it that you, with so small respect, charged on 
 those worthy citizens." 
 
 " Worthy citizens ! Did your highness 
 but" 
 
 " And gave such a rude token to that huge 
 artizan of the temper of your rapier and your 
 own ?" 
 
 ^ The ruffian dog spoke treason rank trea- 
 son, your highness, and I cut him down." 
 
 " What were his words ?" 
 
 " What it is little meet your princely ears 
 should be shocked with hearing. I dare not 
 
O4? AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 repeat the offensive outrage. The foul-mouthed 
 villain met but his just punishment ; and if I 
 have done wrong I arn ready to meet mine." 
 
 The high-toned sincerity of these words was 
 pleasant to the elector's ear ; he saw with a 
 glance that such a quick spirit might be want- 
 ing in the days which were at hand, and he re- 
 solved to cherish it. He looked on the young 
 man with an encouraging smile, and his smile 
 was, when he chose it, of sweet and powerful 
 expression. 
 
 " You have done gallantly and well in this 
 small matter,"" said he, graciously, " which 
 gives proof of what I may expect from you on 
 greater occasions. What is your name?" 
 
 u I am called Gaspar Von Hey en, may it 
 please your highness."" 
 
 " It pleases me that you shall be henceforth 
 called Captain Von Heyen. Such is your title 
 from this hour ; and until your new warrant can 
 be made out let this signet, which I give you 
 in the warmth of goodwill, and with all the pri- 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 65 
 
 vileges it confers, be the token of your rank. I 
 shall expect you to dine with me to-day, and 
 in half an hour, remember.''' 
 
 The young man, overwhelmed by this un- 
 looked-for turn in the tide which had appeared 
 the moment before to be setting so strongly 
 against him, was unable to make any reply, 
 and stood motionless on the spot. 
 
 " I know all you would say, and I will say 
 it for you to myself, gallant captain," said 
 the elector, smiling again, bowing graciously, 
 and retiring, followed by his valet to an inner 
 room. The new-made captain recovered him- 
 self as well and as quickly as he could, put the 
 precious ring on his finger, and stalked forth 
 from the palace to change his buff doublet and 
 huge trooper's boots for a more seemly dinner- 
 suit, swelling with that bloated loyalty which 
 is compounded of grateful feeling, self- applause, 
 and tickled vanity." 
 
 " Ah, my friend ! art thou here already ?"" 
 exclaimed the elector, as he entered his private 
 
66 
 
 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 cabinet, and found it occupied by a person of 
 noble mien, richly yet plainly dressed, and of 
 about his own age, into whose embrace he al- 
 most sprang. 
 
 " Dear Nuenar, this is prompt and kind ! 
 I could scarcely have reckoned on an answer to 
 my summons, and here thou art !" 
 
 " Ghebhard, thou earnest as quick, and 
 quicker in my time of need would that I had 
 the might as I have the will to serve thee." 
 
 " Thou hast it Nuenar, and I need it all. 
 Sit thee down and list to me/' 
 
 Count Nuenar obeyed the wish of his old 
 and intimate friend ; while the elector, dis- 
 missing his attendant, walked to and fro, disen- 
 cumbering himself of the remainder of his 
 gaudy trappings, and talking the while. 
 
 " My brow is easier, now that I have doffed 
 the mitre ; see Nuenar, what a mark it leaves 
 on my front,"" and as he spoke he stopped be- 
 fore a high and broad mirror of great value and 
 rare dimensions, which stood in a richly- carved 
 frame against the wall. 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 6? 
 
 " Aye, now I look once more like a free 
 man ;" continued he, " thank Heaven, I have 
 cast aside for a while those trammels of church 
 pride ! What a penalty I pay in those res- 
 traints, for the power I enjoy." 
 44 Dost thou enjoy it, Ghebhard ?" 
 44 Do I ? aye, Adolphus, in my heart's 
 heart ! Is it not glorious to lord it over the 
 base herd and more so still to raise up honest 
 worth, and make a warm heart grow warmer 
 with joy and pride ? Even this very instant 
 here, just as I entered, I was able to do both, 
 and that without an effort, by the mere force of 
 
 the station M 
 
 44 Thou hast so hardly earned." 
 
 <c True, Nuenar ! and which " 
 
 " Thou wilt find it harder to preserve ?" 
 44 Tis even so, good Nuenar, and it is for 
 this thou art here to-day." 
 
 44 Has anything strange occurred ? Hast 
 thou unravelled any fresh intrigue ?" 
 
 " The designs of my enemies now require no 
 
DO AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 unravelling, nor is there any novelty in their 
 base acts. This whole city is a mass of open 
 treason." 
 
 " And yet the emperor has sent thee hither, 
 as his umpire in the conference P 
 
 " That I might commit myself in some way 
 with my colleagues, or break into open rupture 
 with the chapter, or that beggarly town coun- 
 cil, which dares to thwart every measure I pro- 
 pose, even for their own good." 
 
 " And what is the object of all this ? where 
 would they have it end ? How comes the em- 
 peror, even, a party in the cabal ? M 
 
 " The object is my ruin, and the cause, as I 
 am told, envy. My friends here and elsewhere 
 say that all is centred in that one word ; that I 
 am hated by high and low, because they feel 
 me as I feel myself! to tower above them 
 all in mind at least, if not in might. But 
 that too may come, and even this cringing 
 nuncio crawl at my footstool yet !" 
 
 " Ah, Ghebhard ! Ghebhard ! Does thy am- 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 69 
 
 bition take that flight again ? I had other 
 hopes for thee." 
 
 " Hark thee, Adolphus ; I must have power, 
 or I die ! I have not yet half drained the in- 
 toxicating draught. I would be emperor or 
 pope aye or higher still, if worldly rank had 
 yet a loftier station. Nay, look no reproof, 
 my friend, for I am not false to my opinions 
 nor my pledge. I laugh at, even while I 
 loathe, the corrupt abuses of this church in 
 which I am a hierarch. I love reform as well 
 as thou dost, all Lutheran as thou art. Every 
 act of my authority leads to the adoption of the 
 new doctrines throughout my fief; but I cannot 
 turn the flood of public feeling. I must wait 
 till it comes to the full, and take it at its ebb." 
 
 " And yet thou wouldst be pope ? thou 
 wouldst wear away the impress of the mitre by 
 the tiara's still heavier weight !" 
 
 " Tut, tut, Adolphus," exclaimed the elector, 
 laughing, " thou art too precise thou takest a 
 passing word, the mere type of an ambitious 
 
70 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 thought, as though I had sworn it for my 
 creed ! I said I would be pope or emperor, 
 mark ye, yet no man can be both, nor do / 
 look to be either, believe me, my too matter-of- 
 fact friend. In short, Nuenar, I know not 
 rightly what I say, for I am not quite certain 
 of what I feel. My blood is boiling this 
 whole scene to-day excites me to the utmost 
 and one bright vision which crossed the proces- 
 sion's path, has out-shone even all the splendour 
 of Heaven and earth, and set my mind a-flame." 
 
 " A vision ?" 
 
 " Oh, Adolphus, how thpu wouldst pin me 
 down to terms and definitions ! Well then, it 
 was, in good faith a form of almost visionary 
 brightness and immortal beauty." 
 
 * ; Oh, a woman !" 
 
 " A woman ! an angel, Adolphus ! I gazed on 
 her with special wonderment and delight, and 
 from a mixed feeling ; for did I not know that 
 the unfortunate Queen of France, or of Scots, 
 as they choose rather to call her in England, 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 was a dozen years older, and in close durance 
 there, I could have sworn she stood to day (as 
 I saw her of old in the Louvre gallery) in the 
 open balcony of our good friend Conrad Von 
 Kriechlingen." 
 
 u I never saw the hapless Mary Stuart." 
 
 " Nay, but hast thou seen this younger, and 
 full as beautiful copy of that fair model ? That 
 is more to the point." 
 
 " I know not exactly at what point thou 
 would'st aim, Ghebhard ; but belike it was 
 Duchess Anne of Saxe-Coburg who caught 
 thine eye to-day. A letter from Von Kriech- 
 lingen tells me she comes to visit at his house, 
 during the sportive mummeries of this mock 
 peace-making. 111 
 
 " No, it could not have been she that so 
 struck me, though doubtless she was among the 
 group. The brilliant creature who so enamour- 
 ed I would say so pleased me was not a 
 married woman." 
 
 " How knowest thou that?" 
 
72 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 "By having marked the cross of a canoness, 
 which lay on her fair and heaving bosom." 
 
 " Then it was the daughter of John George 
 of Mansfeldt, who so fixed you," said Nuenar, 
 amused but nothing surprised at the graphic 
 minuteness of his more ardent friend. 
 
 " I knew not he left a daughter has she 
 brothers ?" asked Ghebhard quickly. 
 
 " She has, three, at your highnesses service," 
 replied Nuenar, with an emphasis, and some- 
 thing like a serious smile, the meaning of which 
 the elector knew, but seemed not to heed. 
 
 " Are those young men provided for ?" 
 
 " Not all, as I have learned wouldst thou 
 be willing to dispose of them ?" 
 
 "Count Mansfeldt was a gallant knight; 
 the emperor ought not to neglect his children," 
 said Ghebhard, with a careless air, adjusting his 
 dress before the mirror, and seeming to disre- 
 gard the half sarcastic tone of his friend. 
 
 " Wert thou emperor, Gliebhard, his daugh- 
 ter would be" 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. J3 
 
 " High in my favour most surely, if her 
 merit bears even small proportion to her beauty; 
 for that, I confess myself to worship. Adol- 
 phus, she is divine !" 
 
 " 1 doubt it not." 
 
 " If thou didst 'twere a heresy worse than 
 that thou art convicted of. But enough of this 
 canoness. I have had sufficient of sacred sub- 
 jects for to day, and must give the rest of it to 
 secular concerns. Oh, Nuenar !" continued the 
 elector, a serious air suddenly succeeding to the 
 tone of bantering pleasantry which he had just 
 assumed, and as he spoke he flung himself on a 
 couch beside the chair occupied by his friend, 
 " Is it not hard, my best friend, that I cannot be 
 in all things what I would be, and that even in 
 what I am, I cannot be quite what I wish ? What 
 wild thoughts flicker in my brain ! I some- 
 times fancy myself more than mere humanity ; 
 yet often, alas ! sink down to less. I feel as 
 though my mind were cast in a mould too large 
 for mortal man's ; as if the molten ore of intel- 
 
 VOL. I. E 
 
74 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 lect and passion failed, ere the cavity was filled, 
 and left the plan imperfect. Every bound of 
 my heart tells me I was meant for happiness : 
 yet I never have been happy. Wild, chequer- 
 ed hours of rapture I have felt. Power I have 
 struggled for and gained gained to a small 
 extent. Every impulse of my soul leads me 
 towards generous deeds. I have done some 
 good, and how been paid for it ! But, oh, 
 Adolphus, how short of all I would do or feel, 
 had I the means of doing or enjoying ! Yet I 
 feel destined to high things to the most emi- 
 nent reach of bliss !" 
 
 The elector started up as he spoke these 
 words, paced the room with animated action, 
 and looked as if a futurity of greatness and of 
 rapture was visible to his gaze. 
 
 " You think me extravagant, Nuenar ? un- 
 bounded in my wishes ungrateful to Heaven 
 for what I have obtained unworthy, perhaps, 
 of more ?" 
 
 " I think, Ghebhard, you possess much that 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. ^J5 
 
 might satisfy a reasonable man, and means, 
 with good management, of gaining a great 
 name. Archbishop in your church, elector of 
 the empire, one among the princes of Europe, 
 liege-sovereign of 300,000 souls, with a fertile 
 territory, fine towns, and teeming villages, lord 
 of the Rhine for much of its broadest and love- 
 liest course, with large revenues, wide patron- 
 age, and great privileges." 
 
 " And with all, Adolphus, not mine own 
 master ; nay, nor even master of myself !" 
 
 " I know not the distinction."* 
 
 " "Tis not so subtle, neither. Is not the em- 
 peror my liege? but that could be borne. Is 
 not this turbulent city, this sink of bigotry and 
 beggary, where monks and mendicants lord it 
 with factious burghers is it not more sove- 
 reign over me, than I over it ? And am I mas- 
 ter of myself? Have not wild passions always 
 dragged me or driven me on ? Hast not thou, 
 Nuenar, from my early youth, struggled often 
 to save me from my own excess ? I know my 
 
 E2 
 
76 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 faults, and thank Heaven I know the luxury 
 of a friendship that lets me give free bent to 
 thoughts which, if suppressed, would choke 
 me." 
 
 With these words the elector took Count Nue- 
 nar's hand, and pressed it firmly between both 
 of his. His phlegmatic friend betrayed no such 
 emotions as beamed in Ghebhard's expressive 
 and ever-varying countenance. Even while he 
 forcibly returned the pressure, his regular fea- 
 tures showed no play. His placid mouth did 
 not tremble, nor did his eyes appear brighter 
 or larger than before, like those of warmer 
 temperaments, which gain lustre and fulness 
 from excitement. Count Nuenar's mind, was 
 like a bow always ready bent. Ghebhard's as 
 the weapon's string, which if not at times relax- 
 ed, had surely snapped and broken from over 
 tension. Either mind singly might effect much 
 in its respective capacity ; one in resistance, the 
 other in action, But the little enterprize of 
 the first might fail of desired results, without 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 77 
 
 the stimulating ardour of the latter, which in 
 its turn might overshoot the object, if left alone 
 and unchecked by the counterpoise. But two 
 such mindsacting together for a common purpose, 
 had every prospect of success ; and that which 
 they were now engaged on, required all their 
 united energy and prudence. It was the intro- 
 duction of the reformed doctrines into the 
 chapter and city of Cologne, and thence 
 throughout the whole of that electorate, of 
 which Ghebhard was at once the spiritual and 
 temporal chief. 
 
 This had been the great, indeed the sole 
 object of Count Nuenar's life, even before the 
 appointment of his friend to the high dignity he 
 had acquired, when scarcely turned thirty years 
 of age. Since that period, Ghebhard, whose am- 
 bition burst through the narrow ways by which 
 it bounded to its goal, had laboured anxiously 
 in the cause which reason and feeling alike told 
 him to be good. Independent of personal pride 
 in his station, he felt sincerely the honour of 
 
78 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 being instrumental to the enlightenment of his 
 kind. Yet, while he laboured to make men what 
 he believed they ought to be, he could not help 
 despising them for being what they were. He 
 was not one of those self-dubbed philanthropists 
 who affect to call the beings lowest in the scale 
 of humanity " brothers," yet neglect every 
 means to make them worthy of the brotherhood ; 
 who whet the passions of the people, as mecha- 
 nics sharpen their tools, wearing them out while 
 grinding them to an edge, and when worn out 
 flinging them aside among the wreck and rub- 
 bish. 
 
 Ghebhard Truchses was, in short, from birth, 
 education, talent, reflection, and impulse, an 
 aristocrat, as who of his station in his time 
 aye, or in ours could fail to be ? Conscious 
 of superiority to the mass of his fellow men, 
 and therefore convinced that gradations in the 
 scale were an inevitable law of nature, he felt 
 proudly grateful to heaven for having made him 
 what he was, although his impassioned tempe- 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. J9 
 
 rament led him sometimes, as we have seen, to 
 murmur and complain. But he was an aristo- 
 crat of bold, broad views, not overlooking the 
 defects of those who stood on the same eleva- 
 tion with himself, while gazing on the more ob- 
 vious littleness of the classes that moved below 
 him. He would have willingly seen all men on 
 a level as to moral rights ; but the very in- 
 stinct of self-preservation, as well as the exercise 
 of reason, told him it was wiser to raise one 
 class up than to pull the other down. He knew 
 that the broad mass of social material might 
 be fined gradually to a point ; but that the 
 apex of a pyramid could not in moral, how- 
 ever it might in mechanical, equilibrium 
 maintain its balance were it to be all at once 
 reversed. 
 
 As one of the superior men who, in those 
 early days of European freedom, saw even 
 vaguely through the mists of political economy, 
 which is in ours, perhaps, degenerating into 
 political extravagance, Ghebhard Truchses is 
 
80 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 deserving of an honourable place in history. 
 As one of those whose virtues and faults, whose 
 strength and whose weakness, led to adventures 
 and vicissitudes of no ordinary interest, he 
 merits at least the place which we would give 
 him in its romance. 
 
 The conversation, our relation of which pre- 
 ceded this not unnecessary digression, was inter- 
 rupted by the entrance of the kammerrath, the 
 official functionary whose duty was to announce 
 to his highness the service of the mid-day 
 meal. 
 
 " Dinner ! already ! I had quite forgotten, 11 
 exclaimed he. " Forgive me, dear Nuenar, if 
 the pleasure of our meeting drove from my 
 head all other duties but that of communing 
 with and confessing myself to thee." 
 
 " Thou art quite absolved, and I not a little 
 hungry," replied the count ; " but after the 
 repast, Ghebhard, we have much, very much to 
 talk over. Thou wilt not sit long, nor let the 
 service linger ?" 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 81 
 
 " Were it but in thy honour, Adolphus, the 
 wine-flask must circle freely ; but besides thee 
 and Kriechlingen, I have bidden several others. 
 Say, sir, are the dinner guests arrived ?" 
 
 " Baron Conrad, the Italian count, and the 
 Abbots of St. Kennett and St. Mary are 
 already in the withdrawing room, waiting 
 your highnesses coming," replied the kammer- 
 rath, or chamberlain, as we may translate the 
 title. 
 
 " Body of the saints ! are they ? we must 
 bestir ourselves, Nuenar, nor keep these good 
 folk shivering in the damp of the mould-tapes- 
 tried saloons. Let Walram wait on me !" and 
 as the chamberlain retired, the ready valet en- 
 tered the cabinet ; and the elector resumed at 
 once the business of dressing and the conversa- 
 tion. 
 
 " Aye ! methinks this violet velvet doublet 
 goes well with the white point and spangles, 
 and after all suits me better than the cumbrous 
 trappings of my state. What sayest thou 
 
82 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 Nuenar ? It is Walram's own choice. Is he 
 not a valet of infinite taste ? That nod speaks 
 approval and confirms the fiat. My ruff, now, 
 Walram, and the Venice chain with Cellini's 
 last-wrought medallion ; I shall wear them in 
 honour of this Italian to-day. Knowest thou, 
 Adolphus, Count Jerome Scoti, or Scotus, or 
 Scotin ? I scarcely know which in propriety 
 to call him, for he brings me recommendations 
 in various languages, and from several coun- 
 tries." 
 
 " I have no knowledge of any such names. 
 Those travelling counts by whom thou, Gheb- 
 hard, art so beset, rarely penetrate my solitude, 
 even by report. 1 * 
 
 <c And is it not pity, Nuenar, that a man like 
 thee should so bury himself? one so formed 
 to" 
 
 ( ' Do better in my retreat for the great cause 
 of moral liberty, than waste myself on worldly 
 vanities, and be the prey of each adventurer 
 that crosses the Alps to infest our cities and 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 83 
 
 gull the simple or the vain the lowly or the 
 great ?" 
 
 There was more animation, and more of re- 
 proach, in the utterance of these words than 
 was usual in the manner by which Count 
 Nuenar was wont to check the constitutional 
 impetuosity of his friend. But the subject now 
 started was a sore one, for he had frequently 
 found it necessary to interpose between Gheb- 
 hard's generous credulity and the baseness by 
 which it was abused. 
 
 Of all the princes of his standing, not one 
 was so celebrated for all that renders even the 
 most lofty intellects the victims of the meanest. 
 His love of literature and the fine arts his 
 idolatry of talent in men, and of beauty in 
 women his enthusiastic sympathy with all 
 that he admired his total freedom from envy 
 or malice himself, and his slowness to suspect 
 it in others his open hospitality, and his love 
 of pleasure, all combined to render the arch- 
 
84 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 bishop-elector of Cologne the mark of the de- 
 signing impostors alluded to by Nuenar. 
 
 No one, perhaps, had made so many mis- 
 taken attachments, or been so frequently de- 
 ceived. The facility of his nature not only 
 encouraged, but invited deceit. Men are oftener 
 knaves from temptation than from tempera- 
 ment ; and such a character as Ghebhard's gene- 
 rated the evils by which he suffered, warming 
 into life by its very splendour the reptiles 
 which made him their prey. He had been often 
 the dupe of men bearing false names, and 
 women with titles to which they had no right ; 
 but of the crowds who had for years thronged 
 his all but kingly palaces, at Bonn, Cologne, 
 Poppelsdorf, or JBruhl, there were few who did 
 not give him back envy for his noble qualities, 
 and who, in doing him wrong, did not lay the 
 surest foundation on which to build deep hatred. 
 It was thus that he, who of most in his station 
 had done the least harm and greatest quantity 
 of good to his fellows, and had most freely 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 85 
 
 shared his means, and most readily exerted his 
 influence to promote their welfare, possessed 
 more enemies, perhaps, than any one. But 
 hitherto he had thoroughly despised all such. 
 A libel or lampoon caused him not the least con- 
 cern ; and as for more serious attacks, he pos- 
 sessed a fund of energy and courage ready to 
 meet all drafts. No one had yet borne oftner 
 or with more genuine dignity the baffled efforts 
 of malignity. But he had yet known no re- 
 verse. He was buoyed high above the flood of 
 events by a firm conviction of his good destiny. 
 He had not yet, in fact, been thoroughly tried. 
 He had been so little blunted by disappoint- 
 ment, his heart was still so warm, youth still 
 throbbed so high in his pulse, and revelled so 
 stirringly in his blood for youth and age are 
 merely relative terms, depending not on years 
 but constitution that he was as ripe as ever for 
 a new attachment, as willing to trust, and as 
 ready to be deceived. It was in this mood that 
 he was now about to form the acquaintanceship 
 
80 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 of one, whose celebrity is most owing to the 
 connexion begun that very day, but who, even 
 independent of it, is notorious for being, in the 
 words of an old German author, " the chief 
 wonder-master of deceit." 
 
 Ghebhard Truehses had in a high degree the 
 quality of enduring advice, or even reproof, 
 from a friend. It must be an unkindly mixture 
 of selfishness and sensitiveness that is not grati- 
 fied, rather than hurt, by any such proof of 
 sincere regard ; and there was a genuine tone in 
 Count Nuenar's words that left no doubt of his 
 sincerity. Ghebhard was, moreover, pleased at 
 every instance of animation in one so phlegma- 
 tic, from the natural feeling that makes us flat- 
 tered at seeing in another the reflection of our 
 own merits, or even faults. He only smiled, 
 therefore, at the covert reproach contained in 
 Nuenar's allusion, and said in reply, 
 
 "As you please, Adolphus ; in as far as I am 
 concerned, lean heavy, spare not. But for a 
 stranger, an unknown and untried man, have 
 
AGXES DE MANSFELDT. ] 
 
 mercy. This count, though he is an Italian, 
 may be honest. His retinue is, I am told, 
 magnificent. My letters both from Padua and 
 Salamanca speak much of his learning and 
 science, while that from Paris lauds his accom- 
 plishments and his honour to the highest pitch 
 of praise. Now let's to table ; we will give 
 fair trial ere we condemn " 
 
 " Or be too credulous." 
 
 " Nuenar, Nuenar, thou art of too cautious 
 a kidney, an infidel as to mankind, a very 
 Hussite in unbelief. Didst thou know English 
 I would quote thee a verse or two, worthy to 
 keep thee in the true faith thou owest thy 
 fellows." 
 
 " Recite, recite, and then translate," replied 
 Nuenar, smiling in his turn, as the elector took 
 him under the arm and led him from the 
 cabinet. 
 
 " Here then is the couplet 
 
 4 Leave reasone : believe ; wonder ; 
 Beliefe hathe maisterye, reasone is under.' " 
 
88 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 repeated Gebhard, laughing, as they walked on 
 through a long file of officers and other atten- 
 dants, lay and clerical: and, just as they 
 reached the grand saloon or withdrawing room, 
 completing the translation of the English dog- 
 grel into German prose. 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 89 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE household of the elector formed in 
 themselves a large party. There were chap- 
 lain, and almoner, and lecturer, with several 
 other spiritual consumers of worldly things, 
 mixed with chamberlain, equerry, grand-master, 
 and groom, and a long list of temporal aspirants 
 for the grace of heaven. All these, with a 
 dozen or more visitors, the usual number on 
 common and quiet days, like the one in ques- 
 tion, completed a table of about thirty covers. 
 The grand dinners often brought together dou- 
 ble that number at the board. But whether 
 the company was great or small, promiscuous 
 or select, every thing was in the truest keeping 
 of splendid entertainment. 
 
90 'AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 The elector, accompanied by Count Nuenar, 
 entered the saloon, where his officers of state 
 had previously received the guests ; and ad- 
 vancing to the circle, he addressed to each some 
 phrase of frank yet dignified civility. To the 
 Italian count, as of highest rank, and a stranger, 
 he paid most marked attention, and gave the 
 most particular welcome. 
 
 This personage was no other than he whose 
 splendid equipage had excited so much atten- 
 tion that morning, as it brought up the tail of 
 the procession. He was of tall stature, slight 
 and well proportioned ; his complexion was dif- 
 ferent from the generality of his countrymen, 
 and his light brown mustachios and beard were 
 trimmed, curled, and scented, in a manner that 
 proclaimed much care, and was correspondent 
 with his whole personal appearance. His dress 
 was of rich velvet, glittering with embroidery, 
 spangles, and fillagree buttons, yet made in a 
 fashion of such good taste, that nothing appear- 
 ed overloaded or gaudy; several jewels were 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 91 
 
 evident in various parts of his apparel, or as 
 ornamenting the three or four crosses and stars 
 of different orders, which hung on his breast ; 
 and suspended round his neck in a triple coil, 
 was a massive gold chain, " every link of which 
 was a thumb Vbreadth wide, and a thumb and 
 a half long," as is recorded by a German chro- 
 nicler, and proved by the portrait painted on 
 wood, and presented by the notorious original 
 himself to the city of Dantzic, (in the state 
 library of which it is placed,) and bearing this 
 modest inscription, " Effig. Hieronimo Scotii 
 Placent.^ On this authority, and some others, 
 we state that the individual in question was not 
 of a prepossessing countenance. His long face, 
 pointed chin, thin lips, low, flat forehead, and 
 piercing blue eyes, spoke a depth of serious 
 cunning and ignoble prudence, that was strongly 
 contrasted with the calm, grave beauty of Count 
 Nuenar, and the still nobler but less regular 
 expression of the elector's broad and prominent 
 front and features, which, taken separately, were 
 
92 
 
 AGJJES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 in no way remarkable, but in their combined 
 effect highly so. In every other respect the 
 stranger proved himself suited to the level of 
 his host ; and he walked first to the dining-hall, 
 through corridors lined with the living pageantry 
 of state, and took his seat at table, on the 
 elector's right hand, with the easy good breed- 
 ing of one accustomed to the place of honour. 
 
 The rest of the company shewed no person 
 of any interest in our story beyond those men- 
 tioned, and young Ulrick of Leckenstein, whose 
 modesty prevented his mentioning his engage- 
 ment for the elector's dinner, during the conver- 
 sation in the balcony, lest the ladies he spoke 
 with might have suspected him of vanity, which 
 was, after all, and quite unknown to him, his 
 leading foible. There was one at table with 
 him, who soon found it out, and turned it to 
 account, as we shall see in the sequel. 
 
 The early part of the repast went over in the 
 common-place way usual to dinners in all ages; 
 appetite being first attended to and satisfied, 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 93 
 
 before conversation or real conviviality com- 
 mences its full flow. But, at the table of Gheb- 
 hard Truchses, the social delights of feasting 
 were never long kept back by grosser consider- 
 ations. It was there he reigned eminently 
 conspicuous for all that was most pleasing in 
 hospitality, good-fellowship, and talent. But 
 his efforts on those occasions were more exerted 
 to give scope for the capabilities of others, than 
 to display his own. He always exercised this 
 faculty with rare tact, and never more success- 
 fully than on the present occasion. 
 
 The Italian readily fell in with the humour 
 of his host; and in reply to his observations 
 concerning Paris, Padua and Salamanca, (in 
 the several universities of which Ghebhard 
 Truchses had pursued his early studies with 
 great honour,) he entered on a fund of anec- 
 dote and descriptions that seemed inexhaustible. 
 Nor did he merely speak of things as they then 
 were, or in relation to changes which had taken 
 place since the elector had walked the various 
 
94 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 halls in his student's cap and gown ; but he 
 ran fluently back upon the traces of time, spoke 
 on matters of remotest history, and brought 
 forward scenes and personages of centuries gone 
 by, with a graphic power that at once delight- 
 ed and amazed his listeners. 
 
 He very soon engrossed the attention of the 
 whole company, for every one present was more 
 or less interested in the variety of topics he 
 touched on, embracing almost every thing in 
 the range of then known science or art. 
 The elector was enwrapped in delight ; even 
 Nuenar was won over from his predisposition 
 in the stranger's disfavour, and he listened, ad- 
 mired, and wondered like the rest. 
 
 " In sooth, count, you do with infinite power 
 raise up the images of buried things. A 
 wizard's skill could scarce do more, 11 said the 
 elector, as a short pause occured after one of 
 the stranger's spoken sketches, only broken by 
 murmurs of applause from all parts of the 
 table. " And my old master of rhetoric, the 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 95 
 
 venerable Joachim Montoni how you bring 
 him again before me ! He is now a most aged 
 man ?" 
 
 " Not so old, neither," replied Scotus, as we 
 shall call the Italian, choosing the termination 
 of the dead, in preference to that of the living, 
 language of his country, as most of the writers 
 by whom he is mentioned have done, following 
 the Latin biographer of Ghebhard Truchses.* 
 
 " Not old !" exclaimed the elector. " Why 
 when I sat in his class at Padua, he numbered 
 at least three score and ten ! and it is now 
 how many ? Eighteen, aye nineteen years 
 since then ! Is not that an aged man ?" 
 
 " Comparatively, yes," answered Scotus, 
 carelessly, but with a look of so strange a mean- 
 ing as made all near him stare, first at him, 
 and then at each other. But the Italian's look 
 was unexplained, and not commented on at the 
 moment. 
 
 * De actis et fatis, Gebhardi Truchesii. Davide Koe- 
 lero. Altorf, 1645. 
 
96 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 " Your highness might, perchance, like to 
 see the professor's hand- writing when he was a 
 younger man than even when you listened to 
 his lectures ?" said Scotus, drawing from his 
 doublet a most antique-looking parchment- 
 covered book of small dimensions, fastened with 
 brazen clasps of curious workmanship. 
 
 " I should be glad of any memento of a man 
 I loved so well," replied the elector, " and 
 particularly of characters traced by his own 
 hand, the letter you were the bearer of being 
 written by that of his secretary. This seems a 
 rare volume of manuscript. Its shrivelled 
 leaves have the true stains of antiquity : it is 
 as old, methinks, as Joachim Monthlies self." 
 
 " If your highness were to examine it a little, 
 you might believe it to be older." 
 
 " Ah. here is the professor's signature indeed, 
 and the date 1527, more than fifty years back. 
 This seems to be a curious collection of auto- 
 graphs," remarked the elector, turning over the 
 leaves. 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 97 
 
 " Yes, I love to gather these contributions 
 from memorable men." 
 
 " Gather their contributions !" said Truchses. 
 " Gather them ! Why here is Raphael's ; 
 here Dante's ; here Ariosto's name ! If ga- 
 thered, it must have been in the grave !" 
 
 66 It is easier to outlive one's friends than to 
 give new life to the dead !" said Scotus, with a 
 solemnity of tone so strongly contrasted with 
 his previous animation that the whole company 
 felt a thrill of awe, in unison with the almost 
 supernatural meaning implied in the expression. 
 
 " Outlive one's friends ! And what are we 
 to infer from that, count ?" said the elector, 
 smiling as he observed the half awe-struck 
 looks of his guests ; but he could not see his 
 own. 
 
 " Whatever may seem most pleasing to your 
 highness," replied the Italian, with an air of 
 resignation and modesty that seemed mixed 
 with sorrow. 
 
 " The great Raphael died full half a century 
 
 VOL. i. F 
 
98 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 ago ; you are not quite so old methinks, 
 count ?" said Nuenar, with a sarcastic smile. 
 
 " 1 am glad you find me worthy of a thought, 
 sir," said the Italian. 
 
 " And the immortal Dante closed his life in 
 thirteen hundred and thirty-one, two centuries 
 and a half ago," observed one of the abbotts 
 who sat on Scotus's right hand. 
 
 " In thirteen hundred and twenty-one, reve- 
 rend father," rejoined the latter, " and was 
 born in twelve hundred and sixty-five. He 
 who followed the hearse of the man, and has 
 rocked the cradle of the child, may be accurate 
 as to dates of him he loved and honoured." 
 
 The Italian checked himself here, sighed, 
 and passed his hand across his brow. No one 
 replied ; no one could, no one in fact dared 
 trust themselves to speak. 
 
 At this moment a servant announced to the 
 Italian that his secretary waited without, with 
 letters just arrived by the post. Scotus, with 
 an air of much good breeding, requested per- 
 
AGNES DE MANSFETDT. 99 
 
 mission of the elector to retire, for the purpose 
 of their perusal. The latter insisted on his re- 
 ceiving, and if he chose it, reading them at 
 table. The secretary was accordingly intro- 
 duced, and he put several missives into his 
 master's hand. The latter placed them looselv 
 before him on the table, selecting one, which 
 he begged leave to open ; and as the elector 
 inclined his head, in persuasion rather than as- 
 sent, he could not help being struck with the 
 address 
 
 " TO NOBODY," 
 
 which was written in large characters on the 
 back of the letter. His excited curiosity made 
 him look at the others One was directed in 
 characters which appeared to be Chinese ; ano- 
 ther bore the word " Cologne," and no more. 
 The rest were covered so as to defy casual 
 scrutiny ; but these which were visible had all 
 the usual marks of the post regulations dis- 
 tinctly and legibly stamped. 
 
 " Does your highness know that hand- 
 F 2 
 
100 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 writing ?" asked Scotus, as he carelessly broke 
 the seal of another, and shewed a close written 
 epistle to the elector. 
 
 " It should be that of his majesty Philip II. 
 of Spain, if I err not," was the reply. 
 
 " Your highness is right," said Scotus, 
 shewing the signature of the despot, which 
 Ghebhard was well acquainted with. 
 
 " And this ?" continued he, tearing away the 
 heavy seal from another, and pointing to the 
 name at foot. 
 
 " That is Elizabeth's of England !" exclaim- 
 ed the astonished elector. 
 
 "Even so," said Scotus. He then placed 
 his letters within the breast of his doublet, hav- 
 ing hastily glanced at their contents, dismissed 
 his secretary, who walked carelessly round the 
 table, and left the room at the side opposite to 
 his master. 
 
 What were the impressions made, or intend- 
 ed to be made by all this ? That the stranger, 
 a man of evidently prodigious knowledge and 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 101 
 
 a high order of talent, was in familiar corres- 
 pondence with the most powerful sovereigns 
 existing, had been the friend and associate of 
 some of the most celebrated geniuses, of present 
 and past times, and moreover, that he was at 
 least three hundred years old ! 
 
 That he succeeded to a great extent is cer- 
 tain. On some points there could be no doubt ; 
 of others there was strong presumption. Every 
 one present believed much of what they heard, 
 and several were willing to credit all that was 
 implied. It was still a most credulous age. 
 When we throw back our mind's vision on the 
 facts of history and the failings of mankind, 
 and fix it on an epoch so comparatively near 
 our own ; when we reflect on the advances 
 made by science apd the arts, even before those 
 days,-on the great political events and the vast 
 combinations of mental power in action at the 
 very time, and on the marvellous similarity of 
 of men and measures then and now, we are lost 
 in wonder, that the human intellect could, on 
 
102 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 some points have been so profoundly dark, or 
 so copiously saturated with almost incredible 
 superstitions: 
 
 Among other still common shadows of belief, 
 for they had never been embodied into the solid 
 absurdity of " Articles," was " the grand ma- 
 gistery" as it was pompously called, " the phi- 
 losopher's stone," another of its vague mystify- 
 ing titles, or the power of converting base metals 
 into gold, and that of compounding the elixir 
 of eternal life. A powerful writer of our own 
 days has embodied the miseries of this grand 
 secret, in a way sufficient to deter the most am- 
 bitious of those who laugh at it as chimerical. 
 But even such a writer, two or three centuries 
 back, would have failed to frighten the great 
 mass of believers who followed, or were haunted 
 by, the phantom. We want nothing more to 
 impress us with contempt for our kind, than 
 the crowds who are at all times ready to live 
 and die for the current superstitions of their 
 day. There was scarce one man at the table of 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 103 
 
 Ghebhard Truehses, on that in question, who was 
 not disposed rather to credit than to scout the 
 monstrous prodigy of which Jerome Scotus was 
 anxious to be considered the illustration. Even 
 the elector himself, elevated as he was in talent, 
 and distinguished for his acquirements, was not 
 quite proof against the prevalent influence. He 
 saw that his new-made acquaintance was, at any 
 rate, a man of more than common capabilities ; 
 and mixed with his cordial admiration of talent 
 was that strange and latent waywardness, not 
 uncommon to enthusiastic minds, a willingness 
 to be deceived. 
 
 But, however Ghebhard Truehses and his 
 friends might have been disposed, or acted on, 
 we will not attempt to play on our readers by 
 any artifice. We at once denounce Jerome 
 Scotus and his doings for what they were; 
 him for a vile adventurer, and they a well- 
 woven tissue of cheatery. Readers of our days, 
 or at least those for whom we would write, have 
 no sympathy for, and find no charms in, events 
 
104 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 or characters wrapped in a veil of magical de- 
 lusions. If our heroes or heroines have been 
 too credulous, we neither expect nor wish our 
 readers to be so too. In striving to give them 
 amusement, and perhaps information, we would 
 not treat them as dupes. We shall, therefore, 
 detail events, without endeavouring to torture 
 them into mysteries. 
 
 At the period of our tale, and for some time 
 previous, France and the more northern parts 
 of Europe were overrun by Italian intriguers 
 and impostors, introduced into Paris under the 
 patronage of Catherine de Medicis, and thence 
 spread abroad in all directions. The cleverness 
 of these adventurers was proverbial. There 
 were few of them who were not proficient in all 
 the juggleries of legerdemain, who could not 
 cast nativities, and make an imposing show of 
 knowledge in judicial astrology and alchemy. 
 The most highly accomplished of such persons 
 in all those illusory arts was Jerome Scotus. 
 He soon made for himself a base notoriety ; and 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 105 
 
 his most eminent victims, in Germany at least, 
 counted among them names in which we hope 
 our readers even already feel some interest. 
 
 The first individual of note, on whom he ven- 
 tured openly to practise his arts, was Ghebhard 
 Truchses. He had made himself master of the 
 character, tastes, and habits of the elector. He 
 had procured some real, and forged other let- 
 ters of recommendation for his intended dupe. 
 For he had acquired acquaintanceships with some 
 eminent persons, by means of his learning, ta- 
 lents, and impudence ; and there were few of 
 any celebrity whose hand-writing he had not 
 seen, and could not imitate. He was aware of 
 the elector's predilection for all that was sump- 
 tuous ; and the equipage and train with which 
 he appeared at Cologne was such as would 
 have done honour to a sovereign prince. He 
 had arrived there the evening before the pro- 
 cession, and had taken up his lodging in the 
 house of the burgomaster, Johann Hilpaert, one 
 of the wealthiest merchants in the city, and to 
 
106 
 
 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 whom he was recommended in the highest 
 terms, by individuals of great worth in Ham- 
 burg, from which place he stated himself to 
 have come in a direct line. 
 
 Now, this Hilpaert, was the most bitter, and 
 withal the most powerful, enemy of the elector- 
 archbishop, and the leading agent of the town 
 council, in all the intrigues fomented by Ernest 
 of Bavaria, Bishop of Liege, who, " nothing 
 loth," was urged on, by both high and low sup- 
 porters, as a candidate for the dignity enjoyed 
 by Ghebhard Truchses. 
 
 The latter had, in his turn, counter- agents in 
 the city, by whom, and through the medium of 
 his household officers, he was speedily informed 
 of the movements of his opponents. At the 
 important crisis of the congress, when some 
 -of the wiliest diplomatists of Europe were as- 
 sembled, when the intrigues of all Germany, 
 Spain, and the low countries were in active 
 operation, and when every one concerned knew 
 himself to move in a maze of trick and trea- 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 107 
 
 chery, it behoved all, and none more than Gheb- 
 hard Truchses, to be on his guard, and to coun- 
 teract by every fair means at least and what 
 a wide latitude does diplomacy give to the 
 term ! the chicanery which spread its tangled 
 meshes abroad. It is not, then, to be wondered 
 at that the elector had immediate information 
 of the arrival of so apparently important a per- 
 sonage, and so large a retinue as clattered up to 
 the gate of Hilpaert's residence ; nor that he, in 
 acknowledgment of the honourable recommen- 
 dations sent to his palace almost immediately 
 by their bearer, had despatched an instant invi- 
 tation for the dinner on the following day, at 
 which we have taken the opportunity of bring- 
 ing the stranger to our readers' notice. 
 
 Nor will it, we trust, be thought derogatory 
 to the high feeling of our hero, for such is Gheb- 
 hard Truchses, if we acknowledge that inde- 
 pendent of his prompt sentiment of hospitality, 
 there was a less quick but as sure an instinct at 
 work, telling him to use his natural right of 
 
108 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 reducing the ranks of his enemies and recruit- 
 ing his own, by every advantageous and honour- 
 able alliance. Who or what Count Jerome 
 Scotus was he knew not quite, from the general 
 vague tone of the letters he brought. But as 
 some of them bore the signatures of functionaries 
 of the courts of France and Spain, he had no 
 doubt of his importance. Of the Italian's ob- 
 jects in appearing at Cologne at this critical 
 moment he could have no fixed opinion ; but 
 he little doubted that they were in some way 
 connected with the proceedings of the Congress, 
 although he was no ostensible member of it. 
 Political curiosity thus aided the operations of 
 the other motives which led to the elector's 
 ready attentions ; and the impression made on 
 his energetic sense of action by his guest, was 
 such as to decide him to push them to the very 
 limits of prudent hospitality. 
 
 Jerome Scotus having, by the tricks of con- 
 versation, b} inuendo and pause and emphasis, 
 grafted on the stock of a ready wit and bound- 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 109 
 
 less information, wound up his listeners to what- 
 ever pitch he chose, soon proceeded to convince 
 them that he was not a mere pretender that he 
 could do as well as talk. 
 
 His first trick of legerdemain was practised 
 on the good and bold Baron Conrad Von 
 Kriechlingen, who sat opposite to him, leaning 
 on both elbows, staring with all his eyes, twist- 
 ing his long grizzled mustachios, and moving 
 the lower jaw and firm-closed lips, with that 
 species of action which in cattle is called chew- 
 ing the cud. Scotus wore several rings, and 
 among others one garnished the thumb of his 
 left hand, a brilliant of remarkable size, so 
 much so, that the elector, becoming more fami- 
 liar as the flasks of Rhein-wine were quickly 
 emptied and rapidly replaced by full ones, 
 asked permission of his guest to examine it 
 more closely. When he got it into his hands, 
 he found that, however fine the stone, the setting 
 was of corresponding merit. 
 
 *' This must be Cellini's work ?" said he ; 
 
110 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 " none but the wayward head of Benvenuto's 
 self could have imagined, and no fingers less 
 expert than his could have wrought such a 
 curious and exquisitely carved device." 
 
 " It has ever been my pride to encourage 
 rising genius and to bear its records about me, 1 ' 
 observed Scotus, examining in his turn the 
 elector's chain and medallion, the workmanship 
 of the master-hand just named ; while the ring 
 was passed round the table from one admiring 
 guest to another. 
 
 The somewhat inquisitive and not very clear- 
 headed abbot of St. Kennett's, the Italian's 
 right hand neighbour, unsatisfied it would seem 
 by what had already taken place relative to 
 Raphael and Dante, was resolved to try Scotus's 
 meaning, by the test of another chronological 
 remark. 
 
 " You talk, count, of rising genius," ob- 
 served he; " now, if my memory does not fail 
 me, your celebrated countryman, Cellini, was 
 born in 1500, and died in 1570 ; consequently, 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. Ill 
 
 to have given encouragement to his early efforts 
 you must have patronized him full forty years 
 ago; and methinks that is at least ten years 
 more than your baptism certificate would count 
 for?" 
 
 " Reverend abbott, the hoop in which thai 
 brilliant is set was chased by Benvenuto's ap- 
 prentice hand." 
 
 " And yet made to your order, count ?" 
 
 No answer was given to this direct question. 
 The whole company looked grave again. But 
 the elector was resolved not to let any heavy 
 cloud rest long over his board. He saw into 
 the object of his guest, as clearly as our readers 
 do by this time ; and he individually felt quite 
 indifferent whether Count Jerome was believed 
 to be a man of thirty, or as old as Methusaleh. 
 
 " Well, Kriechlingen, is not that a rare 
 gem '?" said he, as Baron Conrad eyed the ring, 
 and turned it in his hand with great attention. 
 
 " In truth it is, your highness," replied the 
 baron ; " and the chased setting worthy of the 
 
112 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 diamond. It is long since I have seen its 
 like." 
 
 " And where, or when, noble sir, have you 
 ever happened to see its like ?" asked the Ita- 
 lian, with a look so keen as to put the worthy 
 baron in some degree out of countenance. 
 
 " Nay, I said not I had ever actually seen a 
 gem decidedly the same ; but yet it seems to 
 me that I once was struck with nearly, if not 
 quite such a one, on the forefinger of the great 
 Maurice of Saxony, brother of the present 
 elector, and uncle of the Duchess Anne of 
 Saxe-Coburg." 
 
 " Indeed !" said Scotus, with a sneering tone, 
 " and are you, noble baron, quite sure that the 
 elector's ring did not pass into your own pos- 
 session ?" 
 
 " Into my possession ! I do not understand 
 you, count. What do you mean? 1 ' 
 
 " Oh, nothing," answered Scotus, with that 
 provokingly cool air which blows the temper of 
 an irritable man into absolute flame. 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 113 
 
 " Nothing ! what, is it nothing to accuse 
 me." 
 
 " Hold, hold, Yon Kriechlingen !" exclaimed 
 the elector with the tone of friendly authority, 
 irresistible to his choleric guest " no accusa- 
 tion could be ventured, no offence meant, to 
 your honour in my presence and at my table 
 you are too hasty." 
 
 " I hope I am, your highness. but still, 
 under your favour, this insinuation must be 
 explained." 
 
 " Patience, patience, baron, it may explain 
 itself," calmly observed Scotus ; while the ring, 
 having made its round, reached the abbot of St. 
 Kenneths by his side, the pious churchman 
 being at the moment occupied in an interchange 
 of sarcastic winking and nodding of the head 
 with his brother the abbot of St. Mary's, both 
 not a little tickled at the evident annoyance of 
 Kriechlingen, whom they devoutly hated, as 
 the head of the heretic party in the chapter. 
 
 " Verily this is a trinket of worth ; and well 
 might it be for the soul of the Elector Maurice 
 
114 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 had he offered its likeness to the shrine of some 
 holy saint, instead of wearing it, in the vanity 
 of his heart, which knew little of the honour 
 due to mother church," said the clumsy abbot, 
 taking this round-about way of adding to the 
 baron's vexation, and turning towards his more 
 silent brother for applause, while at the same 
 time he laid the ring on the table, close beside 
 Scotus. 
 
 " Holy father abbot," said the latter gravely, 
 " whatever may have been the inclinations of 
 the great Maurice, mine do not urge me to deck 
 St. Kennetfs altar with my thumb-ring bril- 
 liant, to expiate either the elector's errors or 
 my own. Therefore, in all humility, I crave 
 your reverence to restore to me the trinket." 
 
 " What ! me ! restore it!" exclaimed the priest, 
 bustling and fidgetting on his chair, and looking 
 among the glasses on the table, and in the folds 
 of his robe, with great agitation, " may the 
 blessed eleven thousand be my guard ! but I 
 placed the gem here, beside you, count, not an 
 instant gone." 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 115 
 
 *' So!" said Scotus, with the strongest em- 
 phasis possible to be laid on that favourite and 
 ambiguous German interjection " Yet it is not 
 there now." 
 
 " Holy St. Kennett ! It is not indeed !" cried 
 the abbot, his face reddening to a most fiery 
 tinge. 
 
 " His reverence's countenance, stuck up in 
 the shrine of his saint, might rival the 
 great ruby in the crown of King Melchior, 
 and serve a good turn to Elector Maurice 
 in purgatory," said Kriechlingen, across the 
 table, to Nuenar, who with more prudence made 
 no reply to the irreverent sally ; not the less 
 enjoying the abbot's confusion, and his more 
 suspicious temper going even farther than the 
 baron's sarcasm to the churchman's disfavour. 
 
 61 Why how is this mistake? Let the ring 
 be found 1" said the elector, turning to the at- 
 tendants, with a look of severe authority ; 
 " there is surely no rogue, nor yet any juggler 
 in the room ?" 
 
116 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 " Not so unlikely and two fat abbots at 
 the board !" murmured Kriechlingen, laughing 
 at length outright, at the now boisterous protes- 
 tations of the churchman that he knew nothing 
 of the fate of the missing ring. 
 
 " Heed it not, heed it not, good father," said 
 Scotus, " it is not worthy of a thought, and 
 scarcely of being worn by a mortal sinner like 
 me, much less by the effigy of the blessed St. 
 Kennett." 
 
 " Not worthy ! mother of man ! it is a jewel 
 of price, and if found again I warrant me the 
 holy saint will think well of accepting it for an 
 offering if such be the meaning of your words." 
 
 A renewed burst of laughter from Kriech- 
 lingen was the only answer to this suggestion. 
 
 " I esteem the bauble as nought, reverend 
 abbot," said Scotus " it will no doubt be found 
 but in the mean time, perhaps, the worthy 
 baron yonder will let us look on its similitude, 
 which was once the pride of the Elector of 
 Saxony, as he tells us ?" 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 117 
 
 ( * What ! do you again utter this insinua- 
 tion ?" exclaimed old Conrad, no longer re- 
 straining his ire. " Do you mean to charge me 
 with" 
 
 " Pray baron, keep cool, and put your hand 
 into the left side pocket of your haut-de- 
 chausses," resumed Scotus, with great calmness. 
 
 " Put my hand in- my pocket ! what would 
 
 you mean by that ? By Heavens !"- cried the 
 
 angry baron, at the same moment instinctively 
 thrusting his hand into the ample pouch of his 
 wide-slashed nether garments as a man is sure 
 to touch his chin if another talks of shaving. 
 
 " Eh ? What the fiend ! The holy martyrs 
 preserve me ! What is this ?" were the next 
 rapid exclamations of the almost bewildered 
 baron, as he pulled out of its hiding-place, 
 and held up to view a ring, which seemed 
 identical with the article that had caused so 
 much confusion. When he recovered him- 
 self a little, and the expression of surprise 
 which burst from the company had subsided, he 
 
118 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 continued, u This is witchcraft this is not fair 
 play ! By the oath and honour of a soldier, I 
 know not what to make of it ! Abbot of St. 
 Kennett's, you have played me a spiteful trick ! 
 Count Scotus., what is this ? Take back your 
 accursed ring, and free me from a spell for 
 such must hang over me." 
 
 The abbot shrunk aside and crossed him- 
 self, as Kriechlingen flung the ring across the 
 table. Scotus caught it as it rolled towards 
 him, and turning to the elector, said 
 
 " May it please your highness to permit a 
 hammer to be brought me ; I will relieve the 
 conscience of the soldier and the alarm of the 
 priest." 
 
 A sign from the elector sufficed for one of the 
 attendants to leave the room, and to return im- 
 mediately with the required instrument, which 
 he placed in the Italian's hands. The latter 
 had, in the mean time, touched a spring, 
 which forced the diamond from its setting. He 
 placed the glittering gem on his napkin ; and 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 119 
 
 before the elector could interfere to prevent the 
 blow, he reduced it to dust by one heavy 
 stroke. 
 
 A volley of exclamations of surprise and re- 
 gret burst from all sides, but none were so 
 loud, or had their source so deep, as those of 
 the Abbot of St. Kennett's. 
 
 " Holy saints ! what a pity ! A jewel worth 
 a thousand moutons (For if it was worth one ! 
 Oh, count, count, why did you not rather give 
 it to me for the shrine of my blessed patron, 
 than do this almost sacrilegious deed this 
 almost heathenish sacrifice ? Jesu Maria ! a 
 thousand pieces of gold lost to our abbey for 
 ever ! that is, as I would say, a precious orna- 
 ment of that value at least, lost to the statue of 
 the saint. The hand of Satan is in this ; for 
 how else did the bauble find its way to the ba- 
 ron's breeches pocket ? But why do I ask ? the 
 evil one and his imps know where to nestle !" 
 
 To prevent a retort, which Kriechlingen was 
 preparing having been set greatly at his ease 
 
120 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 by the demolition of what he considered the 
 enchanted jewel and to give the finishing 
 stroke to the wonderment he had already ex- 
 cited, Scotus, with the same calm tone he had 
 observed throughout, begged the abbot to be 
 consoled, for that perhaps the gem was not in- 
 evitably destroyed. 
 
 " How not destroyed ?" exclaimed the dissa- 
 tisfied priest. " Did I not see the precious 
 stone reduced to powder ? Is not its respected 
 dust covered by that napkin, like a winding 
 sheet over a corpse ? Ah, 'twas a wanton rob- 
 bery of the church ! You have not done well 
 in this, Count Scotus ! You have not done 
 well in this !" 
 
 " Faith may work a miracle, reverend 
 father." 
 
 " Faith may work a fiddlestick ! The saints 
 forgive me ; but I am sore vexed at this foolish 
 trick." 
 
 " Come, father, be of better cheer. Blow a 
 breath on this twisted napkin," said Scotus, 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 121 
 
 holding up his own close to the abbot's 
 face. 
 
 " What does this mean ? Take it away, 
 take it away ! I cannot, with patience, see a 
 man play the fool with his own fortune, and 
 make light of the saint's loss a miracle, 
 indeed !" 
 
 " Nay, blow one breath, holy sir !" 
 
 " There, then, there ; and Heaven forgive 
 your extravagant mummery, and send you 
 more sense than you seem to want money i'" 1 
 said the abbot, disinclined to refuse any re- 
 quest of his now very questionable neighbour, 
 and giving a hoarse puff on the napkin, with all 
 the force of his lungs. At the same moment 
 Scotus turned it inside out, by a dextrous twist 
 and a quick shake ; and lo ! the wonderful 
 ring appeared in all its brilliancy, shining in 
 primitive innocence, as though magic had never 
 worked wonders upon it. 
 
 An electric thrill ran through the witnesses 
 of this feat. Old Kriechlingen jumped from 
 
 VOL. I. G 
 
122 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 his seat. The abbot of St. Kenneths fairly 
 started up, and quitted the table abruptly, 
 calling loudly on his patron to grant him pro- 
 tection from the snares of the evil one, who 
 must, he declared, be abroad. Scotus quietly 
 put his ring on his thumb, shook his napkin 
 with an indifferent air, and answered some ex- 
 pressions of applause at his dexterity, on the 
 part of the elector, by an assurance that it was 
 but child's play in comparison with what he had 
 the gift of performing. 
 
 And this was true. The art of sleight-of- 
 hand, by which this clever conjurer had con- 
 cealed his really valuable ring, and made it re- 
 appear whole and sound when his trick was 
 completed, was but a trifling specimen of his 
 skill, and has been a thousand times surpassed 
 since his days. But it was first-rate jugglery 
 then. The reader will have divined that the 
 accomplice-secretary slipped the counterpart 
 ring into the baron's breeches pocket, when he 
 was leaving the room after the delivery of the 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 123 
 
 letters to his roguish master, and that this 
 counterpart was also a counterfeit, Scotus pos- 
 sessing the secret of making false diamonds of 
 paste, a secret practised with great effect a 
 century later than his time, by the notorious 
 Marquis St. Germain, who sported with many 
 a credulous dupe, pretty much in the manner 
 of his great original, and who has had in his 
 turn numerous imitators, up to the impostors of 
 our own days. 
 
 66 And will not your reverence accept this 
 poor offering for the shrine ?" said Scotus, ad- 
 vancing towards the abbot in mock humility, 
 and holding forth the ring. 
 
 " Offer me no offering ! Avaunt ! Apage 
 Sathanas /" exclaimed the half-terrified priest, 
 spitting on the ground a pious, but rather ill- 
 bred species of practical exorcism and retreat- 
 ing towards the door, which had been already 
 gained by the abbot of St. Mary's. " The 
 Virgin forbid that our sacred shrine should be 
 polluted by the devil's handy-work ! No, no ! 
 G 2 
 
124 AGNKS DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 Sooner would I strip the sacred statue stark 
 naked, and throw its consecrated treasures into 
 the Rhine, than lay a finger on that unholy 
 thing ! Sancta Maria or a pro me /" 
 
 " Reverend brothers in grace, you do not 
 quit me so soon ? Ye will not break up our 
 party for this harmless trait of hand-trickery ?" 
 said the elector, following the retreating eccle- 
 siastics, with a smile, which he could not resist, 
 yet meant no offence by. 
 
 " Not quit your highness, when enchantment 
 wraps you round ! not break away from a party 
 in which Beelzebub is the chief guest ! Ah, woe 
 is the day, with due respect to your highness's 
 station I say it, when magic and sorcery find a 
 patron in the archbishop's palace, and heresy 
 is mixed up with devilry at the table of our 
 spiritual Lord ! 
 
 Nulla salus est in domo 
 Nisi cruce munit homo ! 
 
 Alas, and alack for the true faith, when cope, 
 crosier, mitre, and dalmatica, are*flung aside 
 
AGNES !> MANSFELDT. 125 
 
 for temporal trappings when spells and charms 
 and heathenish signs are fostered in the house 
 which should be holy ! Come brother, come ! 
 We pray your highnesses excuse and when we 
 betake us to our exorcisms by and by, I promise 
 your highness that the sprinkling of the holy 
 water and the prayers for grace shall not be 
 unmixed with beseechings to our blessed patron 
 that your highness may be snatched from your 
 too manifest delusions, for the glory of mother 
 church, and the saving of your own soul." 
 
 With the utterance of this tirade, the abbot 
 of St. Kennett and his brother-priest hurried 
 away, crossing themselves and jostling the ir- 
 reverend attendants, and repeating aloud frag- 
 ments of the saints' litany and counter-spells 
 against magic, until they fairly cleared the 
 porch of the archiepiscopal palace. 
 
 The half-heretic elector threw up his hands 
 as the churchmen quitted the room, as if in the 
 action of giving them his blessing, but with a 
 shake of the head which spoke the mockery that 
 
126 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 prompted the movement. A burst of laughter 
 from all present was the accompaniment. 
 Kriechlingen, and Nuenar even, could not re- 
 sist that unseemly explosion of disrespect to the 
 representatives of the priestcraft whose autho- 
 rity they had renounced ; while the reverend 
 individuals of the household, though for the 
 most part Catholics, relieved of the presence of 
 those spiritual drawbacks to mirth, joined in the 
 loud chorus which they knew well would in no 
 way be discordant to their host, in either his 
 temporal or spiritual capacity. 
 
 The places at table were quickly resumed. 
 The depths of the elector's cellar poured forth 
 their choicest samples. The revelry went on. 
 Conrad of Kriechlingen was soon reconciled to 
 the trick he had been the subject of, though 
 still sorely puzzled by fruitless attempts to 
 fathom it. Count Nuenar forgot his anxiety 
 for private converse with Ghebhard Truchses. 
 Young Leckenstein was false to an appointed 
 visit to his fair cousin and beloved mistress. 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 127 
 
 Von Heyen neglected the duty of parade. The 
 whole company in short, were spell-bound under 
 the influence of Jerome Scotus ; who, encou- 
 raged by the elector, and urged by the rest, 
 continued till night had nearly set in to astonish 
 and delight the whole party, by feats of skill 
 and proofs of talent, as varied as they were 
 wonderful. 
 - 
 
 
128 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 IT may be well, in reference to the powers 
 and practices of our conjuror, and to the effects 
 which they produced on the destiny of our hero, 
 to sketch briefly the state of feeling which then 
 prevailed on the subject of magic and its various 
 accessories, and to trace the nature of its in- 
 fluence on such a mind as that of Ghebhard 
 Truchses. 
 
 In earlier ages than that which forms the 
 epoch of our tale, necromancy and the arts of 
 the cabalist were considered as philosophical 
 pursuits, rather than as deeds of demonology. 
 Theurgy, so often confounded with these, is in 
 its propel signification the power of doing super- 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 129 
 
 natural things by lawful means, such as prayer 
 to Heaven, acts of penance, and devotional 
 exercises ; and the study of the occult sciences, 
 as implied in that term, was far from being 
 considered ipfamous. Their most celebrated 
 professors were, on the contrary, men of piety, 
 the cell of the monk being most often the as- 
 trologer's studio, or the alchymist's den. 
 
 It was not till religious differences opened 
 men's minds, while they hardened their hearts, 
 that keen distinctions began to be made between 
 what was lawful in science and what was not ; 
 that the useful arts were separated from the 
 unholy ; and that men agreed on what should 
 be objects of veneration and what of odium. 
 
 The intense avidity with which those studies, 
 in all their phases, were followed by the Jews 
 that race marked out for reprobation by mon- 
 strous prejudices, which are even yet by no 
 means extinct seems the first cause which ex- 
 cited the hatred of the church against them 
 As long as magic was exclusively the pursuit of 
 c3 
 
130 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 the priesthood Christianity found nothing in it 
 repugnant to the true faith ; but when the He- 
 brew sage turned his deep scrutiny into the 
 fathomless depths, then were its professors de- 
 nounced as degraded beings, who bought their 
 knowledge at the price of their own damnation. 
 
 Yet, even then, it was not attempted to deny 
 the reality of the science. The priests, in aban- 
 doning it to other professors, took care to en- 
 courage the popular belief in its genuineness; 
 but that merely to make it and its followers 
 objects of abhorrence, and to give themselves 
 the credit of a counteracting power, more mighty 
 than that which they renounced. 
 
 It was thus, in the progress of deception, that 
 exorcisms, incantations, and counter-charms, 
 came into vogue. The church, instead of en- 
 deavouring to enlighten the world, drew an ad- 
 ditional blind before the beam that was beginning 
 to pierce through. She long hesitated to call 
 in the power of legal statutes or common penal- 
 ties, to crush the romantic superstitions which 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 131 
 
 she preferred to combat by those which are 
 called religious. And, therefore, the orthodox 
 world was only balanced between two equally 
 absurd and baneful attractions; and the human 
 mind was pressed down by a double weight. 
 
 When, however, the Reformation burst broad- 
 ly on the benighted nations, the monstrous 
 monopoly of Rome took the alarm ; and bull 
 after bull was launched forth, by successive 
 pontiffs, with the avowed object of combining 
 sorcery and heresy in a common anathema. 
 Terrific persecutions took place on the continent, 
 against those joint abominations. Both became 
 equally abhorrent to the good and bigoted Ca- 
 tholic, who considered the man that disbelieved 
 in transubstantiation, or ate flesh on a Friday, 
 as on a level of infamy with him who was sup- 
 posed to have fiends and demons at his back, 
 and to have sold himself to the devil for the 
 knowledge of the black art. 
 
 The two great sects of Reformers in the six- 
 teenth century took diametrically different views 
 
132 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 of the question of magic, as indeed of most others. 
 The Calvinists locked with scornful rage upon 
 the venal quackery of the mother church ; and 
 considered her exorcisms, and other rites, to the 
 full as idolatrous as the arts they were directed 
 against were admitted to be damnable. The 
 Lutherans, on the contrary, including the lead- 
 ing divines of the Anglican church, treated as 
 absolute impostures those pretended magical 
 powers, which the mother church affected to 
 admit that she might turn her protection against 
 them to profit ; and which the Calvinists fostered 
 the belief in, for the ferocious delight of putting 
 them down by persecution. 
 
 It was thus that the juggleries of Jerome 
 Scotus, displayed before the reforming elector, 
 Ghebhard, and his Lutheran friends, and the 
 nominal Catholics whose opinions were so in- 
 fluenced by his, were considered rather in the 
 light of venial tricks than serious crimes. And if 
 some awful misgivings arose at times, as to his 
 mysterious skill, his apparently enormous wealth, 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 133 
 
 or his implied pretension to uncommon and 
 unnatural age, each man who felt such and 
 there was scarce one who was entirely free 
 from them strove to shake it off, and to 
 combat the doubts which he despised. 
 
 The one exception to this state of feeling was 
 Count Nuenar. His stern, dry, and unromantic 
 mind was quite proof against the delusions of 
 magic. It was like a rock, through which no 
 stream of sentiment or fancy ever trickled. 
 High principle was its only impulse, and it re- 
 pelled every weakness, no matter what their 
 source. Nuenar believed this to be the realiza- 
 tion of true mental greatness. But he was 
 wrong; for the coldest temperaments have their 
 delusions as well as the warmest. He quite 
 mistook the standard of mortal perfection, which, 
 if there be such at all, admits of no extremes. 
 A statue is not more human than a shadow. 
 Some hands feel rather like warmed marble than 
 like glowing flesh. And the brain that is never 
 obscured by the vapours of fancy, can never be 
 
134 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 refreshed by the dews into which they dissolve. 
 These are unconnected and broken images. If 
 put together they may give some notion of the 
 character of Count Nuenar. 
 
 We would not willingly tire our readers by 
 this kind of moral anatomy. It is better to let 
 our personages develop their minds in action. 
 But analysis and definition are indispensable in 
 the most dramatic narrative. On the stage, their 
 place is supplied by actual personification ; and 
 in writing for that arena, the great skill con- 
 sists in what to leave unsaid. In such as this, 
 it is to say what is necessary, in its proper 
 place. Ambitious of that aim, without pre- 
 suming to hope that we take it exactly, we may 
 add a few words more as to our hero in con- 
 trast with his friend. 
 
 Weaknesses of various kinds seem inseparable 
 from minds of great energy. We need not ran- 
 sack history for examples they rise up at 
 every step on the path of life nor drag in meta- 
 physical theories to embarrass what baffles re- 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 135 
 
 search. We sometimes, it is true, meet men 
 who are more like graven images of man ; beings 
 whose clay seems to have been kneaded with 
 some indurating essence, that hardens them 
 against the susceptibilities of humanity. Indi- 
 viduals of that stamp may display power, they 
 never reach to greatness. But it has been al- 
 ready acknowledged that our hero had more 
 than one weakness ; and, if he had not, he had 
 never been a hero of ours. 
 
 Ghebhard Truchses was a believer in destiny. 
 A man who was firmly persuaded that he had 
 started in life under the influence of a favourable 
 omen, might easily be led to believe or to wish 
 to believe in good or evil stars, and to give 
 credit to the pretenders who boasted a know- 
 ledge of their mysteries. It was, in truth, this 
 vague and undefinable desire to trust to su- 
 pernatural agencies that acted on Ghebhard 
 Truchses, rather than direct and positive belief. 
 His proud and ambitious spirit, acknowledging 
 the humiliations of mere mortality, longed to feel 
 
136 AGXKS DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 itself in the care of some occult guardianship, 
 even at the risk of being made its sport. He 
 was not satisfied with the superintendance of a 
 providence that watched over all alike. He had 
 benevolence enough to wish that all men were 
 his fellows, aye, and to labour for their improve- 
 ment. But, conscious of his comparative ad- 
 vantages, he instinctively encouraged the hope 
 that superior minds were under separate in- 
 fluences and this was the extent of his super- 
 stition. 
 
 A man so cunning as Scotus could not fail 
 to discover the true nature of this weakness, 
 even had he not been previously acquainted with 
 its existence. But aware of it as he was, and 
 resolved to work on it for his own designs, he 
 managed with great tact the introduction of the 
 subject it hinged on. He contrived to let as- 
 trology slip in, as it were, to the general dis- 
 course in which he took the lead ; and when the 
 elector caught the bait, and urged the question 
 with his usual impetuosity, the wily Italian re- 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 plied casually and coldly, turning into other 
 topics, when he had just said enough to keep 
 that predominant in his mind. 
 
 Between the several acts of sleight-of-hand 
 with which Scotus astonished the company after 
 the departure of the abbots, he skilfully intro- 
 duced anecdotes illustrative of the secrets of 
 alchymy and other arts, which, like legerde- 
 main, he seemed to have at his fingers 1 ends. 
 The writers on the hermetic philosophy were 
 the familiars he called up to aid his enchant- 
 ments. Tremegistus the Egyptian ; Geber 
 the Arab ; Raymond Lully the multiplier ; 
 V r illanova, Gustenhover, and a hundred others, 
 were made to dance before his auditors in the 
 vapoury maze of their own imaginings, until at 
 length every one present, more or less, believed 
 himself convinced of something he knew not 
 exactly what as dreamers continue to be, even 
 after their visions are dissolved. 
 
 " Well, count, that fact is explained with 
 truly marvellous skill," said the Baron Von 
 
138 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 Kriechlingen, hiccupping the while, as he swal- 
 lowed a bumper from his capacious, thick- 
 shanked, and embossed green glass " Mar- 
 vellous ! There can be small doubt, methinks, 
 but that that same preparation of double mer- 
 cury, which you so clearly prove to have been 
 the invention of the learned Drivilan" 
 
 " Trevisan, uncle;" said young Leckenstien, 
 who had caught up carefully every word that 
 dropped from Scotus, by whose side he had for 
 a long time been sitting. 
 
 " Well, boy, with all my heart, Trevisan or 
 Drevizan, it's all the same, isn't it. ? Isn't it 
 count, I appeal to you isn't it all the same ?" 
 
 " To you, baron, certainly," said Scotus. 
 
 " Exactly and I am only giving my own 
 opinion, which quite agrees with that great 
 alchymist Drevizan, as to the effects of this 
 double preparation of scamony" 
 
 " A preparation of double mercury," whis- 
 pered Leckenstein. 
 
 " Ulrick, don't interrupt me, I say !" ex- 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 139 
 
 claimed old Conrad. " Am I, your mother's 
 brother, to be whipped up in this hiccup ! 
 way by a snappish boy of a hiccup ! nephew ? 
 By the beard of St. Boniface, I'll not bear it ! 
 and as I was saying, Count as I was saying 
 as Ulrick, boy, what was I saying ? Tell me 
 now, out of all your college reading, you idle 
 dog, what is the best stuff to make the real pro- 
 jecting powder the lapis Philosophorum ? can 
 you tell me that, eh ?" 
 
 " Drink, brave Conrad, drink and be wise! 
 Fill, all a bumper to the honour of the great 
 Trevisan !" exclaimed the elector, enjoying 
 highly the fuddled state of the baron's ideas, 
 and cheering him and his companions on, to the 
 running down of their own intellects, as a hunts- 
 man tantivies his hounds. 
 
 " But your double mercury, and your great 
 Trevisan, have not stood the test, methinks? 
 If I have heard aright the opinion of his high- 
 ness just now, the mixture of mercury with 
 gold, of Basil Valentine, has the rather ob- 
 
140 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 tained his noble suffrage," profoundly observed 
 a pursy, drowsy, old toad-eater, one of the 
 chapter, who always supported the opinion of 
 the man at whose table he fed, but whose name 
 has not been handed down to posterity. 
 
 " I differ hiccup! flatly with that" said 
 old Kriechlingen, who was one of those inde- 
 pendent spirits that invariably oppose the last 
 speaker, particularly when wine inflamed his per- 
 tinacity; and he had now undoubtedly entered 
 into a new labyrinth of explanation, had not 
 the elector stopped his course. 
 
 " Come friends, come !" cried the latter, in 
 his clearest tone of convivial melody ; " no 
 more of this. Wine, wine is the true philoso- 
 pher's stone for to-day, at least. Let metals, 
 and alkalies, and vegetables yield their claims 
 for the discovery of the grand arcanum. This 
 amber essence of Rudesheim is the true trans- 
 muting power, turning our very thoughts to 
 gold, and giving to joy an ever -living spring. 
 Fill, friends, fill !" 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELJJT. 141 
 
 ki Under your highnesses favour, I hiccup ! 
 I don't agree I say hiccup ! that Hocheimer" 
 
 " His highness is right, his highness is right. 
 Essences before alkalies, juices in preference to 
 bodies, were also the choice of " 
 
 " Now, then, a bumper to beauty !" cried 
 the elector, knowing well the best method to 
 stop the mouths of both the baron and the para- 
 site ; and giving a free flow to his own animated 
 and amorous feelings. " Up, up to the brim ! 
 Let each man think of her he loves or loved 
 it is a toast for all ages friends do it honour !" 
 And the enthusiasm of the elector as he filled 
 and drank, gave proof that the sentiment came 
 from his very soul. 
 
 And what man particularly what German 
 in those days had not done honour to the double 
 inspiration of beauty and wine ? Let us give 
 to civilization the credit of its miracles. Let 
 refinement receive its due praise, for softening 
 the manners of mankind, and hallowing the 
 sweet hypocrisies of social life. But let us not 
 
142 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 forget the merits of other times the worth of 
 other systems the racy vigour with which men 
 felt and acted, the bold sincerity with which they 
 spoke and sinned. " There is truth in wine," 
 was not then a mere proverb. It was a reality ; 
 for then there was truth in man. His follies 
 and his vices walked the day broadly, like 
 honest libertines, scorning to skulk in the twi- 
 light obscurity of cant- The glaring crimes of 
 those days were more shocking, but not half so 
 demoralizing as the mean vices of our own ; for 
 they carried their condemnation and their re- 
 medy in their very doing. The emasculating 
 fopperies, the unsocial chill of high, and the 
 servile monkeyisms of middle life, the blight 
 of sentiment and passion the selfishness, the 
 envy, the dissimulation of modern times all 
 these do more to unman mankind, than the 
 generous faults of a less deceitful age had done 
 to make it monstrous. 
 
 Manners have known so many changes since 
 the world began to roll, that it is hard to fix 
 
AGNKS DE MANSFELDT. 143 
 
 a distinguishing epithet on any given epoch. 
 There have been many a golden, and an iron, 
 and a brazen age. Darkness and light have 
 succeeded each other in pretty regular succes- 
 sion. But the times of which we treat the 
 midway period between the gloom of feudality 
 and the blaze of liberty furnish scenes and 
 characters, free from fierce savageness on the 
 one hand, or cunning selfishness on the other. 
 Exceptions there were, of course, as there ever 
 must be to general rules. But candour, at 
 least, that jewel beyond price, was in the com- 
 mon affairs of life, a leading principle. Men 
 avowed openly, what, for the sake of morals 
 had better, perhaps, have been concealed. But 
 how often is not true dignity sacrificed to affect- 
 ed decency ? 
 
 A Christian archbishop giving amorous toasts 
 at his own table, is a spectacle revolting to ex- 
 isting notions of propriety. But we must 
 remember the character of the times as well 
 as that of the man, and bear in mind that 
 
144 
 
 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 Truchses was a temporal prince, as well as a 
 Christian hierarch. 
 
 Among the wassailers who did honour to his 
 highnesses superior wine, there was not one 
 flincher. Even Nuenar was, on such occasions, 
 a true German ; and Scotus, though he could 
 not claim that title for excess, easily naturalized 
 himself in any country or custom, when he had 
 an object to gain. On the present occasion, he 
 drank deeply and talked warmly ; but with 
 little effect on either his head or heart. The 
 disciples of modern dandyism could not afford 
 a more cold-blooded illustration of self-com- 
 mand. 
 
 "Yes, your highness, yes! beauty ^s divine;" 
 said he, in reply to some glowing phrase from 
 the elector ; " divine in its essence, its attri- 
 butes, and its powers. Its origin is heaven, its 
 temple the human heart. There we may wor- 
 ship it, and there find irresistible reasons for 
 making its possession the first grand aim of 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 145 
 
 4t I say no no no!" stammered Von Kriech- 
 lingen, from the opposite side of the table. 
 
 " Hush! the elector has not given his judg- 
 ment on the sentiment !" exclaimed the toad- 
 eater. 
 
 " A fico for his judgment, or jour's, or any 
 man's, who says yes when I say no ! Its false 
 sentiment and bad logic, I say" 
 
 " Hush, his highness speaks." 
 
 " True, count," said Ghebhard Truchses, with 
 a sigh, and not heeding the interruptions we 
 have noticed. " True, our hearts are always 
 rife with reasons to justify our desires. Alas, 
 that our heads should so often refuse to sanctify 
 the fiat !" 
 
 " Methinks, your highness, there are cases in 
 which there is little wisdom in appealing from 
 the breast to the brain." 
 
 *' Think you so, indeed ? you have seen much 
 of life, and deeply into the human mind. And 
 think you that happiness is to be found in fol- 
 lowing each impulse of the heart ?" 
 
 VOL. I. H 
 
146 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 " In the pursuit of beauty, yes ; love is a pas- 
 sion not to be judged by common rules. Fools 
 only would subject it to vulgar tests. Your 
 highnesses worst enemies don't accuse you of 
 being one !" 
 
 " Me ! nay, why fix on me a general remark, 
 as though I were its only application ?" 
 
 " In questions of feeling we should never 
 talk abstractedly they are all personal. And 
 who might be a better application for whatever 
 appertains to love, than he who is avowedly the 
 most successful man of his day ?" 
 
 u Has been, count, has been happy, from 
 time to time but those hours are past," said 
 the elector, with a subdued smile ; the recol- 
 lection of by-gone joys checking the flush of 
 pride raised by the Italian's insidious flattery. 
 
 "As good days are in the calendar now as 
 the very best of former enjoyment. As bright 
 eyes are beaming in this very town as ever 
 shone. As witching charms are within your 
 reach as ever were in elf-land. Life is still young. 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 Your highness said ere while, that wine could 
 make it perennial. What then may not be 
 done by love and beauty ?"" 
 
 " These are wild words, count, but there is a 
 witchery in them. The very name of love, the 
 very look of beauty is a spell !"" 
 
 " Does your highness feel the last enchant- 
 ment still ?" 
 
 6< What meaning is there in that question ?" 
 asked Ghebhard ; struck by the significant em- 
 phasis with which Scotus spoke. 
 
 " Is not the look of beauty forgotten in this 
 revelry ?" 
 
 " By my faith and honour, no ! The last 
 bright beam of loveliness sent into my breast 
 seems to rule there like the star of destiny." 
 
 " Perhaps it is such. But many a wander- 
 ing light has illumined by turns that sensitive 
 and capacious heart, if common report speaks 
 truly." 
 
 " In that it tells no lie, Count Scotus. I 
 have often felt beauty's influence always yield- 
 H 2 
 
148 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 ed to it never forgotten it. The flame it lights 
 in my breast is undying." 
 
 "But not consuming, if I may venture to 
 judge by your highnesses temperament." 
 
 " In God's truth, no !" said the elector with 
 vivacity, "nourishing rather keeping the fount 
 of feeling alive and warm in its very source." 
 
 " And each new spring bubbling up through 
 the old one?" interrupted Scotus, with a tone 
 at once fawning and inquisitorial. 
 
 " Even so, count, you know the human heart, 
 and mine, it seems ; so I need not confess the 
 power that loveliness wields over me. Neither 
 will I admit the inconstancy implied in your 
 reproach. I have loved often, but always sin- 
 cerely ; and truth is not to be effaced by new 
 impressions." 
 
 " Your highness would impugn the doctrine 
 that man can love but once ?" 
 
 " I repudiate and scorn it, for I know its 
 falsity. There may be men who have loved 
 but once, but then it is only wonderful that 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 149 
 
 they have ever loved at all. He is an un- 
 happy being, who has met in life but one woman 
 worth loving ; and more so still, who meeting 
 others, finds the effects of his first passion a 
 check rather than an encouragement to new 
 ones. No, count, this dogma of the insensible 
 is a cheat. The true distinction is this : He 
 who has once loved truly can never again love 
 lightly. The charm of the real passion guards 
 him against the spurious phantasies which im- 
 posed on him before." 
 
 " But in wedded life, when congenial hearts 
 are joined, can either find room for new im- 
 pressions ?" 
 
 " Alas ! count, there you strike a chord that 
 can find no echo in my experience, however its 
 melody may vibrate in my heart. Wedded life ! 
 What an unattainable heaven have you opened 
 to my envious gaze !" 
 
 " Nothing is beyond the reach of the elastic 
 mind, that is not warped by prejudice and will 
 not shrink at sacrifices." 
 
150 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 " Tell me, count," resumed the elector, a 
 though he did not heed the last observation, 
 " tell me truly, does your skill in star-learning 
 lead you to believe that two minds, born at 
 different periods but in the same planetary 
 conjunctions, may hold occult communion or 
 sympathy, without personal acquaintanceship 
 existing ?" 
 
 " Your highness puts a home and a hard 
 question ; for nought in the whole system of 
 celestial influences has so much puzzled the 
 star-seers of these and other times. For my 
 own part and with a genuine doubt of my 
 own authority I can only say, that on that 
 particular head the great master of astrology, 
 Geber, your highnesses near namesake, and 
 myself always agreed together." 
 
 The elector thrilled involuntarily. He knew 
 that the great astrologist just named in such 
 familiar companionship was dead full eight 
 centuries. He smiled as he recovered himself. 
 The Italian did not seem to observe him, but 
 continued. 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 151 
 
 " To come to a just conclusion on so intricate 
 a point, it must be first decided whether stars 
 be causes or signs whether they incline with- 
 out compelling, or rule and regulate sympa- 
 thies as well as constitutions. Did I wish to 
 make a parade of learning, I might quote the 
 authority of Albubater, Origan, and Pontanus, 
 in the affirmative of your query. Panzonius, 
 Pellantius, and others, in the negative. But so 
 many nice distinctions rise that it would be 
 only a maze of confusion to attempt a disen- 
 tanglement, until I were possessed of your 
 highness's horoscope, and the fair lady's as 
 well." 
 
 " Nay, count, by Jupiter and Venus in 
 conjunction ! youVe left this earth and flown 
 to other planets. I spoke not of myself, nor 
 of a lady." 
 
 " Your highnesses thoughts were in my 
 mind, rather than your words in mine ear."" 
 
 " If you can read the stars it is not strange 
 that you might read my thoughts, for they 
 
152 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 too were fixed in Heaven, or at least in one of 
 Heaven's masterpieces." 
 
 " She is most lovely," said Scotus. 
 " She ! who, Count Scotus ?" 
 " She whom your highness thought of." 
 " Nay this is but trifling, count." 
 " The thought of woman is always such, to 
 him who durst not, or cannot marry." 
 " A priest neither can nor dare." 
 " Martin Luther was a priest, and did both." 
 " He had not a princedom and an archbishop- 
 ric to lose, count," said the elector, smiling, and 
 glad that the conversation took a turn less per- 
 sonal to himself, or rather to the object which 
 had so occupied his mind. 
 
 " He had happiness and immortality to gain," 
 answered the Italian, with a serious and almost 
 solemn tone he could assume any. 
 
 "Hepaidj perhaps, too dear a price for either," 
 replied Gebhard Truchses, in an accent of deep 
 sincerity which he could not feign. 
 
 " There are two kinds of worldly immorta- 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 153 
 
 lity,' J resumed Scotus, " the one, gained by the 
 sublime labours of science, is conducive to hap- 
 piness or linked with misery according to the 
 construction of the minds of its few possessors. 
 They only may presume to weigh the value of 
 the price they pay for it they alone can judge, 
 or feel its amount." At these words the Italian's 
 eyes became fixed, his brow was knit, his lips 
 were firmly compressed, and he seemed invo- 
 luntarily to clench his hands. The elector could 
 not resist a creeping sensation of doubt and awe. 
 Ulrick Von Leckenstein, listened and looked 
 with breathless interest. Nuenar was a stern 
 and silent observer. Baron Conrad was loudly 
 arguing with Von Heyen, and one or two others. 
 The toad-eater was fast asleep. 
 
 Scotus in a few moments recovered from his 
 apparent deep abstraction, and continued in a 
 calm tone 
 
 " There is another immortality, such as 
 Luther has purchased, that is itself happiness 
 to those who live for fame, and happiness being 
 H 3 
 
154 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 the great and true object of life, whatever pro- 
 cures it can scarce be said to be above its value." 
 
 " The question we discussed, good count, 
 was Martin Luther's marriage," said the elec- 
 tor, " the greatness of this light of true religion 
 I am ready to admit. Also the weight of his 
 example in most things. But even the boldest 
 man will shrink from sacrilege and it is well 
 known that Luther struggled long with his pas- 
 sion for Katharine Bore, ere he stole her from 
 her convent and made her his wife. Remember, 
 count, she was a nun, and vowed to Christ." 
 
 66 Would Luther have struggled or hesitated, 
 had she been a simple canoness, and only wore 
 Christianity's symbol round her neck ?" 
 
 These words were murmured by the Italian, 
 in a close whisper, which none but the elector 
 could hear. 
 
 The effect they produced on the latter was 
 everything the speaker or rather the whisperer 
 could have wished. The elector absolutely 
 started for an instant from his seat. Surprise 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 155 
 
 is not the word to express what he felt. It was 
 a combination of shame, wonder, and self-anger, 
 that at once rushed upon him. He felt himself 
 doubly degraded in having betrayed his own 
 feeling or his fancy rather, for it had not 
 gained the solidity of feeling and in having in 
 a manner compromised the name of a high-born 
 and innocent female, with whom he had never 
 exchanged a word, and whom he had never 
 seen but once. There was something terribly 
 poignant in this first shock ; for the keenest 
 point in all Ghebhard Truchses 1 high notion 
 of honour was that connected with the sacred 
 delicacy, due to every woman whom he loved, 
 admired, or aspired to win. 
 
 But this first effect as instantly subsided 
 under a sense of perfect self-acquittal, which, 
 as we shall show, was almost as painful as the 
 self-formed accusal. The elector's mind ran 
 back in a moment's summary, over all that had 
 passed within it, or that he had said in con- 
 nexion with its main thought since he gazed 
 
156 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 with such delight that morning on the bril- 
 liant face and graceful form of Agnes de Mans- 
 feldt. The determination to know her was as 
 quick as the admiration she excited. Ghebhard 
 Truchses invariably followed up his first im- 
 pressions The enthusiasm of his feelings gave 
 him a quickness of perception that less ardent 
 minds may not conceive, much less be caught 
 by ; and while his eloquent sincerity was almost 
 always successful in generating a return of feel- 
 ing, pride, gratitude and honour combined to 
 keep him faithful to affections once so deeply 
 felt, even when others rose up in his heart ; as 
 though each full-grown crop of passion had 
 dropped some seeds in the fertile soil, to pre- 
 serve its memory from the decaying influences 
 of time, absence, and variety. The success 
 consequent on his own persuasive qualities, and 
 the ardour with which he entered into every 
 new pursuit, had given Ghebhard Truchses that 
 half-formed belief in occult sympathies, which 
 the philosophy then in vogue had gone so ab- 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 157 
 
 surdly far as to attribute to vegetables and 
 minerals, as well as to human beings. It was 
 a floating idea of this nature, connected with 
 his incipient hopes relative to Agnes, that had 
 prompted his recent question to Scotus. But 
 he recollected well that he had not dropped 
 any hint that could bear a possible allusion to 
 her. To Nuenar alone had he spoken of her. 
 Communication between him and the Italian 
 had been since impossible. What then could be 
 the inference in such a mind as our hero's, but 
 that this latter extraordinary person had a po- 
 sitive power of divining his thoughts, perhaps 
 of reading his destiny ? Truchses would, and 
 not unwillingly, have conceded its control to 
 a planet or a constellation. But that it was in 
 the keeping of mortal man or even of a man 
 raised by some supernatural means above the 
 level of mortality was a suspicion accom- 
 panied by intense humiliation. 
 
 All that we have here described passed with 
 lightning speed in our hero's brain ; and his 
 
158 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 presence of mind as quickly recovered its ba- 
 lance. In difficulties purely personal, his gene- 
 rous feelings might lead him at times astray ; 
 but when another and that other a woman 
 was concerned, it was rarely, indeed, his dis- 
 cretion was found at fault. He therefore made 
 nor the slightest remark in return to Scotus's 
 significant whisper ; but while its subtle voice 
 seemed to hiss serpent-like in his ear, he kept 
 his countenance and his tongue under command. 
 His first conviction was that he was more or 
 less, if not in the Italian's power at least under 
 his influence. He had no time to sift the ques- 
 tion. He took it for granted ; and convinced 
 at the same instant that a nearer union with 
 this agent of destiny, if he were such, could 
 not be avoided, and might even lead to essen- 
 tial good, he immediately decided to draw the 
 connexion as close as possible. He therefore 
 said to his mysterious guest, rising at the same 
 time a signal which the company acknow- 
 ledged for a breaking up of the party, 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 159 
 
 " Count Scotus, you lodge with me to-night, 
 and during your stay in Cologne. Johan Hil- 
 paert is not a fitting host for such a man as you." 
 
 Scotus bowed assentingly. The party re- 
 tired to the withdrawing rooms. The elector, 
 Scotus, and Nuenar walking with steady pace. 
 Von Krichlingen and the rest making their way 
 as best *&. they could. All broke into small 
 groups, or conversed in couples. The elector 
 and Nuenar were joined by Von Kriechlingen, 
 who made some clever efforts to stand straight 
 and listen to what was said by his friends. They 
 only passed a few general remarks on the great 
 business they had in hand ; the honest old baron 
 not being equal to the comprehension of details, 
 even had they been inclined to trust them to him 
 just then. 
 
 Scotus approached his table-neighbour young 
 Ulrick, who had watched him whenever he 
 spoke, and followed him still with fascinated 
 gaze. 
 
 " Well, Herr Ulrick," said he familiarly, 
 
160 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 " you now go, no doubt, after this sensual re- 
 past, to the pure delights of a love-feast with 
 the woman of your heart ?" 
 
 Von Leckenstein blushed deeply, and thrilled 
 with astonishment at the wonderful divina- 
 tion which had so fathomed his intentions. He 
 could not reply ; but Scotus saved him the 
 trouble of attempting it. 
 
 " You are a happy and a fortunate man," re- 
 sumed the conjuror " it is few who have the 
 luck or the merit to captivate at duchess at 
 first sight." 
 
 Ulricas brain turned with surprise and de- 
 light. 
 
 " Follow up the stroke boldly, vigorously 
 you shall not want a friend I promise you 
 success," said the tempter, squeezing Ulrick's 
 hand firmly ; and after a little while taking 
 leave of the elector, for the purpose of making 
 arrangements for fixing his residence in the 
 palace. 
 
 We need scarcely stop to dwell on the be- 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 161 
 
 wildering sensations which agitated young Ul- 
 rick's mind. It may be better to state that 
 Scotus had been that morning a keen observer 
 of all that passed in the balcony and below it, 
 before the period of his assuming his station 
 in his carriage, and following with his train the 
 line of the procession. Mixing with the crowd, 
 in a cloak that concealed his finery and as oc- 
 casion required, hid his face from view, he had 
 closely followed and stood by the elector, whom 
 he had resolved to make his victim ; and in 
 pursuance of his system he watched his every 
 movement, like a hawk hovering over ere it 
 pounces on the prey. Other motives fixed his 
 attention on the group in the balcony, which so 
 completely absorbed the elector's observation ; 
 and he had too keen a tact not to distinguish 
 the individual object it had chosen. In what 
 passed during the dinner conversation he had 
 trusted somewhat to chance. Had Truchses 
 been indifferent to the allusion so directly ha- 
 zarded in reference to the canoness, he reckoned 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 on the power of his jargon and his perseverance 
 for forcing the elector into some fanciful belief, 
 connected with the unknown lady. But in spite 
 of Truchses' reserve the Italian saw he had hit 
 upon the right track for working on his feelings. 
 His other objects in watching the balcony, and 
 his late conversation with Von Leckenstein, 
 will be by and bye explained. 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 163 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE quiet dinner-party at Kriechlingen-house 
 formed a very passive contrast to that at the 
 archiepiscopal palace. While the worthy owner 
 of the mansion was laudably employed, as we 
 have shown, in doing honour to the elector's 
 wine and violence to his own wits, the four fair 
 beings from whom we have been too long sepa- 
 rated were partaking of a temperate, but 
 nobly-served, repast, with the invalided wife 
 of the absent baron, and the mother of the 
 sisters who so gracefully did together the duties 
 of hostess. 
 
 Baroness Von Kriechlingen had for several 
 years suffered from a malady, which gradually 
 
164 
 
 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 undermining her health and strength, and ren- 
 dering her a prisoner in her private apartments, 
 did not, however, deprive her of the domestic 
 solace of her family circle, or the company 
 of such guests as visited from friendship rather 
 than ceremony. She was an amiable, unpre- 
 suming, and pious, woman, with good sense to 
 bear with those faults in her husband which she 
 could not control, and good feeling to instil 
 into the minds of her children lessons which she 
 had no power to enforce. Her daughters loved 
 her the better, and probably did not obey her 
 the worse, for this. There is a spring of genero- 
 sity in young minds, which almost always keeps 
 moist and fresh the instinct of duty to an indul- 
 gent parent. 
 
 The baroness's family party was this day 
 completed by the presence of old Cyriacus 
 Spangenberg, the chaplain of Mansfeldt, 
 under whose care Agnes had made her 
 journey from Thuringia to the banks of the 
 Rhine. Respect for this venerable church- 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 165 
 
 man threw a certain degree of restraint over the 
 sisters, to whom he had been till the previous 
 day quite a stranger ; and they were not sorry 
 when he retired to his afternoon devotion, which 
 conscience and habit rendered as necessary to his 
 mind as digestion was to his body. It was then 
 the most pleasing duty of the day was called 
 for, on the part of the sisters the task of read- 
 ing by turns, or playing on the lute or virginals, 
 to their mother, whose life of monotonous se- 
 clusion required such relief. It is true there 
 was little instruction and much less amusement 
 to be found for two lively, not to say giddy, 
 girls, in the controversial writings of those days ; 
 and it was such that Baroness Yon Kriechlin- 
 gen delighted in, and over the leaden pages of 
 which Fredolinda and Emma often, in their 
 own despite, felt their lids to close and their 
 heads to droop. The book chosen for the edi- 
 fication of the present evening, selected by 
 Spangenberg in honour of his celebrated friend 
 Melancthon, was a translation in heavy German 
 
166 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 of his famous defence of the tenets of Luther 
 against the attacks of the Paris doctors, entitled 
 in the original, " Adversus furiorum Parisien- 
 sium Logastrorum decretum" 
 
 The very title of the tract, announced by the 
 baroness as she pulled it from under the cushion 
 of her easy chair, was enough to appal any less 
 devoted individuals than those who so cheerfully 
 set themselves to the task of wading through 
 this mass of controversy. The Duchess of 
 Saxe-Coburg and Agnes de Mansfeldt had no 
 such responsibility ; and they willingly acted 
 on the baroness's suggestion that they should 
 seek together the refreshment of the garden 
 air, and the wholesome exercise of a promenade, 
 on its massive terrace or in its broad alleys. 
 
 The friends were soon abroad ; and they were 
 not long in turning to account the wished-for 
 opportunity for undisturbed communion. 
 
 " Thank Heaven, thank Heaven, I am free 
 at last!" exclaimed the duchess, as she reached 
 the centre walk of the garden ; and, concealed 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 167 
 
 from all observation by a high cypress hedge, 
 she threw her arms round Agnes's neck, and 
 burst into tears. 
 
 "Oh, Agnes !" said she, as she conquered 
 her interrupting sobs and recalled her scattered 
 ideas, "this relief is like heaven itself ! But 
 for this I should have died outright ! My 
 best, my dearest friend, I am even in your 
 arms the most wretched being that breathes." 
 
 Agnes attempted no common-place conso- 
 lation ; because she felt her friend's distress. 
 Deep sorrow is often garrulous ; true sym- 
 pathy never. Anne understood this. 
 
 " How good you are to me," continued she. 
 44 How considerate, in not speaking to. me. 
 That silent embrace is worth a thousand words. 
 It is the true heart-eloquence. Oh, Agnes, 
 that I could be as when last we parted ! That 
 I could blot two years from my life's history ! 
 or that life itself were blotted out ! Why 
 should I live ?" 
 
 " Tell me rather, dearest Anne, what has 
 
168 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 so embittered life ? Speak freely and fully to 
 me. Confidence in me will do more than any 
 random condolence I could offer, for I am ig- 
 norant of the immediate cause of this suffering." 
 " Oh, that I might tell you all !" 
 " Confide to me what you like, no more ; 
 what you can or ought to tell what may relieve 
 your mind in the mere telling, or lead to its re- 
 lief through any means of mine. There is 
 nothing within the scope of my ability that I 
 will not do for you." 
 
 Agnes felt an instant inclination to include 
 the word duty in this pledge. But she checked 
 it as soon as the idea rose up. She was not one 
 of those who damp an offer of assistance with 
 reservations. She would freely have risked her 
 life at the moment for her friend's sake ; she felt 
 that she would be at any time ready to sacrifice 
 it to her sense of duty. Therefore she was 
 not wont to boast, even negatively, of the 
 latter ; and she never willingly uttered anything 
 that might bear the colour of self-applause. 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 169 
 
 " You know not how criminal I am nor do 
 I know how you could serve me,' 1 said the 
 duchess. 
 
 Agnes was startled. The notion of guilt in 
 connexion with her friend had not crossed her 
 mind. This self-accusal at once astonished and 
 shocked her. She said nothing ; but her expres- 
 sive countenance spoke for her or in spite of 
 her. 
 
 " Yes, it is too true," resumed Duchess 
 Anne, " but you must hear me before you con- 
 demn me quite. Indeed I know that it is not 
 in your nature, nor in that of our friendship, 
 that you should do otherwise. I will speak 
 candidly to you, in as far as I can do so. My 
 conscience seems already lightened of half its 
 load but not my heart of any of its suffering. 
 Dearest Agnes, that is breaking !" 
 
 A renewed burst of tears choked further ut- 
 terance for awhile. 
 
 " Speak, speak, my sweet friend," said 
 Agnes " I listen with my very soul." 
 
 VOL. I. I 
 
170 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 They had by this time gained the bottom of 
 the large and dismal garden, the grotesque so- 
 lemnity of which added a deeper shade to the 
 sufferer's air of woe. 
 
 " Let us walk on the terrace, Agnes," said 
 she. " The lock of the Rhine will soothe, 
 though even its placid grandeur cannot solace 
 me. But I must not wear you out with my 
 complaints and alas ! I have none to blame 
 but myself." 
 
 As the duchess gazed far over the houses of 
 the lower part of the town towards the river, 
 and marked it flowing on in full and rapid 
 course, it seemed to impart insensibly that feel- 
 ing of calm which all who have so marked it 
 will understand, and which she had anticipated. 
 " Now I am much better more equal to the 
 detail of my shame," she resumed. " Our last 
 night's conversation, dear Agnes, told you 
 much of my causes of wretchedness. I had 
 hoped to command myself sufficiently to con- 
 ceal tne rest. But a circumstance to-day forces 
 
AGNES DE MAXSFELDT. 
 
 me to a further exposure of my griefs forces 
 me, Agnes, for it is not in mere selfishness that 
 I inflict my sorrows on you. I need support 
 you, my friend are, happily for yourself and 
 me ." 
 
 " Dearest Anne, you lose time we may be 
 broken in upon," said Agnes, with an affection- 
 ate tone, glad to interrupt the utterance of a 
 compliment to herself. 
 
 " Well then, to be brief I have told you, 
 Agnes, of my husband^s estrangement from me, 
 his neglect, his abandonment, almost from the 
 very first months of our marriage. There was 
 enough in the endurance of all this for sorrow, 
 but nothing for self-reproach. Nor have I, you 
 will allow, laid my complaints too heavily on 
 the duke. I have admitted his good qualities, 
 his frankness, his courage, his indulgence, the 
 amiability and gracefulness, which so soon won 
 my heart, as well as the levity which threw it 
 aside almost as soon as won. I have dwelt on 
 all this before." 
 
 i2 
 
172 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 " Then why, dear Anne, repeat it now ? it 
 is acutely painful to me, and you have avowed 
 it not to be to the purpose of what you would 
 communicate." 
 
 " Bear with me, Agnes ; as a woman you can 
 do so." 
 
 " Did you, my friend, always bear with the 
 duke, as a wife ?*' 
 
 " As Heaven is my witness, yes ! I never 
 reproached him, but with my silent tears. I 
 could aye, and can even now, feign smiles for 
 those I am indifferent to but never for him I 
 loved/' 
 
 A sigh for her friend's sake was Agnes's 
 only answer to the avowal, which, as she thought, 
 explained much of the unhappiness which mar- 
 riage had inflicted on the Duke and Duchess of 
 Saxe-Coburg. Our heroine knew, from an in- 
 stinct of good sense, what many cannot learn 
 even from experience, that there is a virtuous 
 hypocrisy founded on generous forbearance, 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 which forms one of the cardinal blessings of 
 wedded life. 
 
 " Well, Agnes, 1 ' continued the duchess, " for 
 nearly two years this state of things went on. 
 I began at length to lie down, as it were, under 
 the burden of my misery. I ceased even to 
 weep or sigh. I was sinking into utter apathy, 
 when a new turn, the worst of all, was given 
 to the deep current of my fate. You know that 
 the duke, with all his light and, I may be 
 allowed to say, frivolous traits of character, 
 has a passionate love for the romantic mysteries 
 of science; often have I known him to pass 
 nights of watching with some alchymist, over 
 the poisonous fumes of crucibles and alembics ; 
 or in cold and rain on the topmost tower of the 
 castle, staring with astrologers to catch a 
 glimpse of some new star through the imper- 
 vious clouds. Like everything he undertakes, 
 those fancies are pushed to excess, and aban- 
 doned ere time is given for a result. You may 
 judge of the numbers of persons attracted to 
 
174 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 Coburg by those notorious pursuits of the duke. 
 You may have heard of the profuseness of a 
 patronage which is too often misplaced. The 
 castle is for ever swarming with strange figures 
 and wild faces. The costumes of almost all 
 parts of the known world are to be seen in our 
 courts, and every professor of science or pre- 
 tender to it finds a ready welcome there." 
 
 6< And might not all this, however irksome, 
 still be borne with ?" asked Agnes, with a slight 
 accent of reproach. 
 
 " All this ? alas ! Agnes, this is not the point 
 of grievance, T make no complaint of it. Do 
 not mistake, but listen to me. About three 
 months back my husband introduced to me a 
 stranger, an Italian, one of the numerous train 
 I have just mentioned, a professor of most arts 
 and oh, Agnes, what a master of all ! I can- 
 not now, even if I would, enter into minute par- 
 ticulars of this man's powers. He is a miracle 
 of talent and knowledge, scarce had I seen him 
 ere I felt his influence I had not known him a 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 week when he seemed the very lord of my des- 
 tiny. He wholly captivated my mind but 
 fear nought else he never touched my 
 heart." 
 
 " Thank heaven for that at least ! I dreaded 
 more than you have avowed," said Agnes, again 
 embracing her friend. 
 
 " I saw that you did, by your looks. No, 
 no, Agnes, I am degraded by my subjection 
 to this man, but not in the common sense dis- 
 honoured." 
 
 " I should like to know him," said Agnes, a 
 hope flashing across her mind that she might be 
 able in some way to serve the duchess, as a me 
 diator between her and the fate this stranger 
 seemed, as it it were, to personify. 
 
 " Heaven foref end ! one victim is enough, 1 ' 
 exclaimed the duchess u though you perhaps 
 would be safe from his influence, for there is 
 something in you, dear Agnes " 
 
 " That will not let me listen to my own praise, 
 and the disparagement of a too partial friend. 
 
176 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 Go on, go on ! I can now breathe freely while 
 I listen." 
 
 " I have wherewithal to tell will make you 
 tremble for me still. You will believe me, 
 Agnes, that to regain my husband's wandering 
 affections has been my great, almost my sole 
 object from the first days of his estrangement. 
 He of whom we speak soon read my mind, and 
 on that weak point gained quick mastery over 
 it- He made no circuitous approaches to my 
 confidence. But at once convinced me of his 
 power, by proving his knowledge of my most 
 secret thoughts. In short he persuaded me 
 that he could remove all obstacles to my happi- 
 ness, could recover the duke's constancy, and 
 attach him to me for ever. I cannot now enter 
 into a detail of the various means he used for 
 the attainment of this end. The spells, the 
 charms, the philtres that we worked together, 
 and administered to my husband" 
 
 " With what success ?" asked Agnes. 
 
 " Alas ! I know not how to answer that ques- 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 177 
 
 tion," replied the duchess, with a sigh, u and 
 I was just about to anticipate it by an account 
 of the changing effects produced by those many 
 remedies. Marvellous indeed have they been ! 
 at times all powerful for their object again 
 total failures, now bringing my wayward lord 
 back to my long-forsaken embraces, with peni- 
 tence and love ; and then banishing him from 
 me, in a more distant abandonment than ever. 
 So did those witcheries work for several 
 months." 
 
 " And did the doubt never strike you 
 Anne," interrupted Agnes, " that the effects 
 which you attributed to magic might have been 
 produced by the magician, for his own purposes, 
 by arts of natural reason rather than enchant- 
 ment ? might not his influence with the duke 
 have acted as a counter-current to his power 
 over you ?" 
 
 " Thousands of wild doubts have flitted 
 across me, Agnes, like the spirits which a con- 
 juror might call up. I have been lost in a maze 
 i 3 
 
178 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 of wonderment and fear ; I only know one thing 
 certain I am wretched !" 
 
 " Dearest Anne, you exaggerate, if not your 
 feelings at least their provocation. Your sen- 
 sitiveness invests the phantoms of imagination 
 with solid forms. There is nought in all you 
 have revealed which can cast a shadow of re- 
 proach, save the facility with which you em- 
 barked your chances of recovered happiness on 
 the venture of an impostor's professions." 
 
 " Hush, hush, Agnes ! how loud you speak, 
 and how imprudently ! you little know the 
 power of him whose anger you thus risk, 1 ' said 
 the duchess, casting round an anxious glance, 
 which almost caused Agnes to smile while she 
 was half disposed to weep. 
 
 " And has this man's influence over you never 
 been turned to a more directly personal aim ?" 
 asked she, sure that her frightened friend had 
 told her but little of her embarrassments. 
 
 A deep sigh was the answer ; and after a 
 short pause the duchess resumed, 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 " I warned you, Agnes, that I durst not tell 
 you all. I am bound by pledges that I shudder 
 at the mere thought of breaking." 
 
 " Then pause in your recital or quit the 
 subject, dearest Anne I have no curiosity, be- 
 yond the hope of giving you relief." 
 
 " Yet I cannot keep wholly silent no, I must 
 go on. He has talked to me, Agnes, has 
 tempted me but in language so vague, so 
 mystical, that my senses ever seemed bewildered, 
 even when my reason was unconvinced and my 
 heart untouched. I know not what he aimed 
 at most. He always appeared to have several 
 objects at once in one alas, he succeeded but 
 too completely." 
 
 " And that one ?" 
 
 " Must not dare not be revealed !" 
 
 " Would that I might but see this man who 
 has so bewitched you, my friend !" 
 
 " You have seen him, Agnes." 
 
 " I have ! where ? when ?" 
 
 *' Oh, ask me not I fear I have gone too 
 
180 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 far in saying even what I have said. More I 
 must not reveal at least for the present. I 
 shall perhaps gain more confidence, more 
 strength, by and bye. Your friendship is an 
 unspeakable support. With it to aid me, I 
 shall by degrees grow able to resist the doom 
 that seems to press me down. You are my 
 guardian angel !" 
 
 "With these words the duchess again clasped 
 Agnes in her arms; while the latter almost 
 afraid of the responsibility thus forced upon 
 her, yet unwilling to check the growing con- 
 fidence which might best enable her friend to 
 cope with the unholy power that oppressed her 
 could only silently return the embrace that 
 was accompanied by the most endearing epithets. 
 
 Agnes began however to apprehend that any 
 effective confidence, which might acquaint her 
 with the more particular causes of her friend's 
 anxiety, was distant, if not altogether doubt- 
 ful ; so evidently had the dread of this myste- 
 rious oppressor gained possession of her mind. 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 181 
 
 But the duchess, as if suddenly bursting from 
 her thraldom, abruptly exclaimed, 
 
 " No I will bear the tyranny no longer. 
 He cannot know what passes here, though he 
 has persuaded me of his supernatural power. I 
 will speak freely, Agnes I dread him not !" 
 
 This was said in a high and fearless tone, 
 but which, as she continued, was insensibly 
 changed to the murmured cadence of returning 
 alarm. 
 
 " Know then, that I have bound myself to 
 his service by fearful pledges, to do his bid- 
 ding in all things, as the price of the recovered 
 happiness which he has so solemnly insured to 
 me to keep secret his words, his wishes, his 1 
 deeds, be they what they may but there is 
 one circumstance of criminal and treacherous 
 duplicity which I have acted in, and which 
 weighs me down with remorse one which I 
 have sworn to conceal, by oaths the recollection 
 of which makes me thrill. Tell me, Agnes, 
 am I bound by an unholy pledge, taken in 
 
182 AGNES BE MANSFELDT. 
 
 terror and repented of in tears of my heart's 
 blood ?" 
 
 " No certainly not !" answered Agnes, un- 
 hesitatingly. She saw it was no time to trifle 
 with her friend's unhappiness, or to risk the 
 fluctuation of her feelings. " No, Anne, there 
 is absolution in our consciences for even those 
 monstrous engagements. Is it not then a duty 
 to break from all that binds us to them ?" 
 
 u It is, it is, my best friend ; my heart ac- 
 knowledges the reasoning, it is the voice of 
 virtue's self that speaks now then at once to 
 unburthen my full heart ! you know, Agnes, 
 how it is that I am here now I, a princess, 
 with royal blood in my veins, and with right to 
 a reigning coronet on my brow yet without 
 even the slightest ornament of my rank, ring, 
 carcanet, ear-drop, or neck-string, unjeweled 
 and unadorned as the poorest burgher's wife 
 that toils for daily bread ?" 
 
 Agnes bowed assent. She had heard the com- 
 mon talk, which told of the mysterious disap- 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 183 
 
 pearance of the Duchess of Saxe-Coburg's splen- 
 did jewels, some weeks before, and much of 
 the coarse scandal which disfigured the report. 
 Delicacy towards her friend prevented any allu- 
 sion to the painful circumstance in previous 
 conversations, and even now did not allow her 
 to speak of it. 
 
 " Yes ! you too have heard the tale, but it 
 is for me to unravel the mystery. Know 
 then," 
 
 At this instant the two sisters appeared on 
 the terrace, coming from the house ; and they 
 rapidly advanced to the friends, who could but 
 ill brook the interruption of a colloquy in which 
 both were so much interested. But they could 
 find no excuse for declining the well-meant yet 
 worrying attentions of their young and lively 
 hostesses, who continued to bear them company, 
 until the light showers of an April afternoon 
 drove them to the shelter of the mansion ; and 
 then the decorous necessities of good breeding 
 claimed a renewal of their visit to the baroness 
 
184 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 in her private apartments, into which Spangen- 
 berg had preceded them. 
 
 The sun had withdrawn from the busy scene 
 it had so brilliantly lighted, and the buildings 
 of the town and the waters of the Rhine grew 
 dark in the hues of the eventide, ere the friends 
 found an opportunity to attempt a renewal of 
 their broken conversation. This was at length 
 occasioned by the periodical return of the drowsy 
 fit which at sunset invariably visited the invalid, 
 to recompense her for the nights of almost 
 sleepless suffering she had endured so long and 
 so patiently. Old Cyriacus, too, accustomed 
 for nearly three parts of a century to those 
 vigils which wore deep into the night, and to 
 that early rising which added precious hours to 
 the too fleeting day, could rarely resist the pro- 
 pensity to slumber which commonly steals on 
 the studious, the infirm, or the idle at moth- 
 time. The pious, but nevertheless, somno- 
 lent discourse which he had so fluently holden 
 during full two hours, on the intricate subjects 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 185 
 
 of election and grace the then leading topics 
 of controversy had almost overcome the sisters 
 as well as their mother. It required a strong 
 excitement to bear up against the u poppy and 
 mandragora" qualities of the good chaplain's 
 conversation. Such was however actively alive 
 in the bosoms of the impatient friends, parti- 
 cularly in that of Duchess Anne, who could 
 scarcely restrain the gnawing irritability that 
 urged her to break away, long before the 
 baronesses head nodded listlessly on her 
 breast, or Freda^s and Emma's eyes began to 
 wink. 
 
 66 Now, dearest Agnes, we may escape," 
 whispered the duchess, when unequivocal sights 
 and sounds pronounced the reign of Morpheus 
 to have set in ; and uttering a few words of 
 apology in the same cautious tone to Freda, she 
 was quietly leaving the apartment, followed by 
 Agnes, who willingly obeyed her signal, when 
 a loud voice on the stairs and the abrupt 
 opening of the door of the anti-room arrested 
 
186 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 the friends, and awoke all the others of the 
 party. 
 
 "No, Ulrick, no a thousand times no!" 
 exclaimed Baron Conrad, in his highest tone, 
 for it was he who now came boisterously on, 
 soured with the Rhenish grape, and disputing, 
 as it were, with his still most submissive nephew 
 every inch of the ground from the elector's 
 palace to his wife's saloon. 
 
 " I differ with you, Ulrick I say you are 
 wrong, boy ; and by Heavens I will not be 
 contradicted !" 
 
 " Nay, uncle, I did not presume to contra- 
 dict" 
 
 " Not in words I allow but you did in 
 thoughts. Don't deny it boy that's making it 
 worse don't deny it, Ulrick, I say !" 
 
 " I deny nothing admit nothing assert 
 nothing, good uncle." 
 
 tc That's just what I hate mortally, for I 
 have nothing to argue against. I hate that cun- 
 ning, hypocritical silence why don't you speak 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 out like a man ? why don't you give me the 
 lie? why, the fiend, donV 1 
 
 " My good uncle, remember that your foot 
 is on the threshold of a sick lady's room ; and 
 that the pious chaplain of Mansfeldt is within 
 ear-shot, and the duchess" 
 
 " Prating popinjay ! a sick lady's room !" 
 said the baron, with a mimicking tone, and 
 stopping short at the door. " Is it thus you 
 speak to me of my own wife, my own flesh and 
 my own bone ? I have a good mind to knock you 
 down by way of comment on your puppyism." 
 
 " Nay, uncle, you know I am your flesh 
 and blood too," replied Ulrick, smiling, and 
 looking with an insinuating air on his intracta- 
 ble kinsman. 
 
 " You are, you dog, I know it, I know it 
 for you look this moment the very image of 
 your poor mother! 11 exclaimed the old man, 
 catching him round the neck with one arm, and 
 leaning at the same time against the door for 
 support, and hugging him, with such a pressure 
 
188 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 as a tender-hearted bear might give to its un- 
 licked offspring. 
 
 This somewhat sentimental attitude and si- 
 tuation was disturbed by the door bursting 
 open, and the baron with his fast-imprisoned 
 nephew staggering together in the room. The 
 good old lady, effectually aroused and fearfully 
 startled, sprang from her easy chair with a 
 tremulous scream. Old Spangenberg, less 
 nervous, opened his eyes wide, stared round, 
 and turned them up to heaven, with an instinct 
 of devotion aroused in all cases of alarm. 
 Duchess Anne and Agnes de Mansfeldt stepped 
 back out of the line of operations ; while the 
 sisters darted towards it, one catching her 
 father in her arms the other placing a timid 
 yet affectionate hand in that of her cousin. 
 
 The baron was instantly called to a sense of 
 his indecorum, and to almost temporary sobriety, 
 by a sudden stoppage of that mental mecha- 
 nism which wine sets in motion and good feel- 
 ing not uncommonly arrests. He stopped short ; 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 189 
 
 and putting one hand to his forehead to assist 
 in quieting the whirligig motion of his brain, 
 and still grasping his nephew with the other, 
 he exclaimed, 
 
 " Hold, hold! standfast, Ulrick! death of 
 the martyrs ! this is too bad. We are wrong, 
 boy very wrong both of us. Stand fast I 
 say !" 
 
 " I am standing fast, uncle, transfixed with 
 shame to come thus into such a presence." 
 
 " Then, by St. Paul, if thou art standing 
 steady the house is still running a mad rig ! 
 so ! so ! all is better now the ceiling is square 
 again, and the walls have ceased their merry- 
 go-round and the furniture has recovered its 
 legs. Grant me grace, ladies all ! I see my 
 uncourteous intrusion in its true light I did 
 not expect such a company in this chamber I 
 forgot my guests and myself. Forgive me ladies 
 forgive me, venerable sir, my good wife par- 
 dons me, I know, ere I ask her too quickly 
 too quickly it is always so. Have I done 
 
190 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 thee mischief, my kind help-mate? have I 
 shook thy gentle nerves ?" 
 
 With these words the baron passed by the 
 princess and the pastor as well as his daughters, 
 and Agnes, whom he considered as a member 
 of the family, his warm heart pointing out the 
 invalided partner of his life as the first object 
 that called for atonement. She soon reassured 
 him ; and he then approached Duchess Anne, 
 next the venerable divine, and lastly Agnes, 
 addressing to each hasty and sincere apologies. 
 He finally called his daughters to come and 
 kiss him, fic and stifle," as he said, " the 
 rising reproaches of conscience for his breach 
 of manners, together with the memory of that 
 last bottle of the electors Stein-wine, which 
 was too potent for any head less hard than the 
 rocky soil it grew on." 
 
 In the mean time young Leckenstein had 
 made his peace with Freda for his breach of 
 engagement ; an easy task, when her wonted wil- 
 lingness to excuse any error of his was strength- 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 191 
 
 ened by his declaration that he stayed away 
 only from the necessity of caring after her 
 father. He said nothing of Scotus or his honied 
 insinuations. Yet he thought much of them ; 
 and he was soon at the duchess's side, propelled 
 by he knew not what occult influence. It was 
 vanity, whose strongly flowing tide was carry- 
 ing poor Ulrick with it among shoals and quick- 
 sands, to escape from which he had no pilot. 
 
 " But I shall make no further excuses," said 
 the baron, " I will rather pull up by future 
 attentions for past negligence. We will have 
 supper soon ; and in the meantime, girls, let the 
 tapers be lighted in the saloon, and amuse her 
 highness and our kinswoman of Mansfeldt with 
 a party of primero or shovel-board ; or bring 
 forth the ghitterns and be musical; or dabble 
 in your 'broidery-looms ; or string your fancy 
 beads ; or cut out your fillagree,"" 
 
 66 Good, kind father ! where is your con- 
 science now, that was so troublesome erewhile?" 
 said Emma, embracing him and cutting short 
 
192 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 his list of time-killing expedients. " Come, 
 dear Duchess Anne, come Agnes, let me be 
 your leader into some of those choice ways of 
 pleasantness. Freda and Ulrick will find a 
 path of their own."" 
 
 " Aye, that's right Emma, thou art well dis- 
 posed to do the honours I see. That's right, that's 
 right ; keep close to your lovely guests, my 
 girl never leave them a minute to themselves 
 don't let conversation flag, or merry-making 
 be worn-out. Make them laugh, and sing, and 
 sport away the time. That's the true way to 
 show hospitality and dispense happiness. Day 
 of my life ! we must all be gay to night. 
 Could you not, my love, for this once bear to 
 be wheeled into the Trojan-tapestried saloon ? 
 well, well !"' continued the baron, as his suffer- 
 ing wife shook a dissentient head at the pro- 
 posal, " well, we must not press you into the 
 jolly service. But his reverence here will join 
 us at supper, and at our after-revelry too I 
 hope, and give a blessing to the gaiety which 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 1Q3 
 
 I am resolved shall stir deftly through the 
 whole house to-night ?" 
 
 To this interrogative assertion the old pastor 
 replied, with a benevolent smile, 
 
 " Much thanks, good baron, are due for 
 your honourable entertainment ; but you must 
 not forget that old age and long habit cannot 
 be safely tampered with. I never eat a night- 
 meal ; and I retire to study whenever the sig- 
 nal-bells of papistry ring out their summons to 
 the vesper mummery.'" 
 
 " Never eat supper! Fast and pray! By 
 St. George, pastor! I swear by St. George 
 for chivalry sake, not from papist reverence ! 
 By St. George ! this is a bad custom, and 
 savours more of the beast and the scarlet wo- 
 man, methinks, than matins or vespers, nones 
 or complin. Commend me to the man who 
 prays on a full stomach. The mind is never at 
 ease else and devotion suits ill with a parched 
 palate or a craving maw. Come, come, pastor, 
 bear with us to-night it's only once in a way." 
 VOL. i, K 
 
194 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 " 'Tis well for you, baron, to do these 
 things. You are still young ; but eighty and 
 two brook them not,'" 1 said Spangenberg, mildly 
 yet firmly. 
 
 (i Why, to be sure, I do count a good score 
 years under that. But a quarter of a century 
 more or less is a trifle in the age of a man. I 
 saw one drink to-day bumper on bumper, 
 bottle after bottle, and make nought of it ; yet 
 he would reckon you to be but a boy in years, 
 and me almost a sucking babe." 
 
 "He must be a prodigy. I would say a 
 miracle, had not the display of those mighty 
 dispensations ceased upon earth, and only ex- 
 isted now in the impure, superstitious, and vile 
 cozenry of Rome. Three score years and ten 
 is the natural limit of man's life. He who sur- 
 passes it has need of great thanksgiving to the 
 Lord, and he who approaches it would do well 
 to cast off the worn-out mantle of worldly va- 
 nities, and turn from ways of deboshed indul- 
 gence into the paths of godliness and grace. 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 195 
 
 Who is the sage, good baron, of whom you 
 speak?" 
 
 This question was an inexpressible relief to 
 Baron Conrad, who had winced acutely under 
 the words which preceded. 
 
 " Who is he?" said the baron, with a glow- 
 ing front and confused utterance, " that I be- 
 lieve, pastor, to be a hard question to answer, 
 but he calls himself Count Scotus; and you 
 may well call him a prodigy, in acquirements, 
 at any rate, even if you doubt his age." 
 
 " An eminent name," said Spangenberg, 
 " eminent for both good and evil bearers there- 
 of. I have not heard of it as belonging to one 
 noted in this present generation, nay, nor for 
 many ages back. In remote times it was borne 
 by more than one of mark." 
 
 "In remote times!" repeated the baron, 
 with a quick accent of curiosity. " How far 
 back ? and by whom, good pastor ?" 
 
 " Why, first there was a pious monk from 
 Ireland, named Marianus Scotus, a bright 
 K 2 
 
196 AGNES DE MAKSFELDT. 
 
 ornament for days of darkness of the Abbey 
 of Fulda, in the eleventh century, a learned 
 chronicler, and a near relation of the venerable 
 Bede." 
 
 " No, it cannot be him he must come of a 
 less pious family," muttered Baron Conrad; 
 while Ulrick trod on his foot by way of cau- 
 tious remembrance, and a check on his gar- 
 rulity. 11 
 
 " Next, there was John Scotus, otherwise 
 Duns, an English Franciscan, and a profound 
 doctor of theology, who died in this very city 
 of Cologne about the year 1300, under circum- 
 stances terrible to be told." 
 
 " Are you sure he was an Englishman, and 
 that he died, respected sir ?" asked the baron, 
 with a tone of doubt. 
 
 " We have good authority for his birth 
 having taken place in the town of Dunstable, 
 in Britain, and as it occurred full three cen- 
 turies back, we need not stretch our faith to be 
 certain he is dead, 1 ' replied Spangenberg with 
 
AGN'ES DE MANSFELDT. 197 
 
 a smile, which the twilight did not allow his 
 host to notice. 
 
 " Humph !" said the baron, or the incre- 
 dulous and half-uttered interjection which that 
 orthography is admitted to represent. 
 
 " And Paulus Jovius, with other credible 
 historians, tells us that being struck with 
 apoplexy, which was taken for the blow of 
 death, this learned divine awoke in his coffin, 
 and after having gnawed the flesh from his 
 hands in agony, he dashed his brains out in 
 despair against the stone walls of his tomb." 
 
 " I don't believe it !" vehemently cried the 
 baron. 
 
 "It has been doubted," said Spangenberg 
 calmly. 
 
 " Doubted ! doubted ! and well it may be, 
 for it^s a bare-faced lie, with your good favour. 
 Ha, ha, ha,"" exclaimed the baron, laughing 
 outright, " he might have been buried alive, 
 perhaps, but he rose again, as sure as Lazarus 
 aye, and he walks the earth to this very hour 
 
198 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 to this very hour, ray good pastor at least 
 I think it must be him. Don't you, Ulrick ?" 
 
 6 Alas, alas ! that the flesh-pots and wine- 
 cups should for ever overload the stomachs and 
 send up their vapour to the brains of the chil- 
 dren of men ! Verily, verily, the debaucheries 
 of old, the seething sins of paganism are re- 
 vived among us ! The world is rife with 
 drunkenness, and rational beings reduce them- 
 selves to the base level of field beasts. Oh, 
 wash out, good Lord, this stain from the civi- 
 lized earth !" 
 
 While the pastor involuntarily uttered these 
 words, in under tones of pious solemnity, the 
 baron had time to recover himself, being most 
 uncomfortably warned of his abrupt and pro- 
 fane speech, by sundry thumps in the ribs from 
 his nephew's elbow, the only answer given by 
 the latter to his appeal. None of the ladies 
 felt quite at their ease; but they remained 
 silent, as the baron exclaimed, 
 
 " You do me wrong, worthy pastor, you do 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 199 
 
 me wrong. I have taken a cheerful glass to- 
 day it is true, more perhaps than was meet, 
 but it was this Count Scotus or this Monk 
 Scotus, as I think he will turn out to be who 
 led me and others too far. He is a wonderful 
 man, in every way, good pastor; a very ma- 
 gician, trust me; a wizard of the first water, 
 as one might say, like the diamond worth a 
 thousand sequins, which he crushed to powder 
 with a hammer to-day, and made whole again, 
 by an impure puff of the Abbot of St. Ken- 
 nett's breath." 
 
 Cyriacus Spangenberg was no .ascetic. He 
 had lived long in the world and had sad ex- 
 perience of excess and extravagance, in the 
 service of the Mansfeldt family, and in the 
 doings of the late count. He knew how to 
 humour a man under the influence of liquor, 
 and he also understood the courtesy due to 
 even a tipsy host in his own house. He 
 therefore replied, in a tone of benevolent 
 bantering, 
 
200 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 " Nay then, baron, with your good leave, 
 I should rather say this Scotus, whom you 
 call a count, was more likely to be that fa- 
 mous conjuror Michael Scott, or Scotus of 
 the north, who was notorious for his know- 
 ledge of the black art in the olden time, 
 for his familiar spirit in the shape of a grey 
 cat, and for riding in the air on a broom- 
 stick, or a flying horse, I really forget 
 which." 
 
 6t It is more likely, pastor, it is more likely, 
 as you say," replied Baron Conrad, with a 
 somewhat subdued tone. " What more is 
 known of this same Michael ? Who waits 
 without ? Bring tapers here, I say this is no 
 fit talk for twilight. Pray pastor, what more 
 of him ?" 
 
 " Why, nothing in particular, good mine 
 honourable host. I know nought more, except 
 that he was buried in the same grave with his 
 own clasped book of magic, and that a Greek 
 epigram was written on him by my illustrious 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 201 
 
 friend George Buchannan of Edinburgh, pre- 
 ceptor to King James, which runs thus" and 
 here old Cyriacus repeated the well-known lines. 
 
 fi It sounds well, pastor ; it savours of merit 
 in the very tingle of the words ; but how may 
 it go in a translation, I prithee ?" 
 
 '* Why somewhat as this, 
 
 ' Oh, Scot ! thou art a Scot in Scotland.' 
 
 the rest has escaped my memory."" 
 
 " What you recollect is rather against my 
 argument though, good pastor, for the Scotus 
 I speak of is an Italian ; though in regard to 
 the magic, the grey cat, and the broomstick, 
 I think it likely to be the same Is'nt it, 
 Ulrick ?" 
 
 " And what then may be the age of him you 
 speak of so wildly, if, worthy baron, you will 
 pardon the phrase ?" 
 
 " Why the Abbot of St. Kennett computed 
 it to be about 320, according to the Italian' 
 own showing." 
 
 K 3 
 
202 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 " Loose authority, baron those rich digni- 
 taries of idolatry reckon nothing rightly but 
 their own odious exactions. Methinks the ab- 
 bot has counted wrong. Since the days of the 
 patriarchs such tenure of life has not been given 
 to man, though Paracelsus boasts he could make 
 a man live four hundred years, if he might 
 bring him up from his birth, and diet him as he 
 list ; but then, baron, he should abstain from 
 riotous living, surfeiture, and strong wines. But 
 let all that pass ! Your new acquaintance must 
 be an extraordinary person. Whence comes he ?" 
 " From the clouds, it may be, or more 
 likely from regions of another direction," said the 
 baron significantly, pointing downwards ; " only 
 he could scarce have got either in heaven or 
 hell his gold- covered chariot, and his splendid 
 jewelled ring, the very counterpart, Duchesss 
 Anne, of one I saw with your uncle the great 
 Elector Maurice, when myself and George 
 Mansfeldt, Countess Agnes's father and my 
 right good friend" 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 203 
 
 At this instant two servants brought in the 
 lighted tapers ; and, as their reflection fell on 
 the duchess, she looked as motionless and 
 ghastly as though she had died without a 
 struggle, and still sat corpse-like on her chair. 
 
 The alarm, the confusion, the cold water and 
 cordials, the exclamations and the prayers all 
 that is usual on such occasions wa<> not want- 
 ing on this. But of all the persons present, 
 Agnes alone had a true notion of the duchess's 
 ailment, and she only therefore could suggest 
 the fitting remedy. She had no doubt that the 
 wonderful personage who had so addled Baron 
 Conrad was identical with him whose tyranny 
 had so subdued her friend. She knew that re- 
 pose and immediate removal to her apartment, 
 where no obstacle would prevent the free utter- 
 ance of her feelings, was the only course to be 
 pursued towards her recovery. She therefore, 
 by every possible persuasion, strove to snatch 
 her from the torturing kindness by which she 
 was on all hands assailed. But the baron and 
 
204 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 baroness, and their warm-hearted daughters, 
 were not to be shaken off old Spangenberg 
 alone comprehending and seconding the argu- 
 ments of Agnes. 
 
 At length the duchess began to recover her- 
 self sufficiently to act on these suggestions. 
 She rose from her seat ; and, taking Agnes's 
 arm, she motioned towards the door, thus ex- 
 pressing her wish to retire. The rest made 
 way ; the baron exclaiming, 
 
 " Good, good ! all is right again ! So, so ! 
 'twas this wild talk about monks and magic, and 
 such wild devilry that frightened our fair and 
 noble guest. So, so, cheer up, dear duchess. 
 Pastor Spangenberg will say a short prayer or 
 two by-and-bye, to purify the house of such 
 evil subjects as we talked of ere while. A night- 
 lamp shall remain in your sleeping-room. The 
 girls shall relieve each other at your bed-side. 
 My nephew here and myself will watch by 
 turns in your anti-room till cock-crow, and to- 
 morrow all will be well again. For the elector 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 205 
 
 has honoured me and my poor mansion by in- 
 viting himself to supper, with my friend Nuenar 
 and Count Scotus himself, who, be he what he 
 may, has tricks and turns at his fingers'* ends, 
 that would raise the sick from the very death- 
 couch, and lay the liveliest ghost that ever" 
 Ere the sentence was finished, the duchess, 
 wholly overcome, sank faintly on the floor. She 
 was carried senseless to her bed ; and when she 
 came to herself again, she found Agnes and 
 Freda watching over her, and applying various 
 means of recovery. The baron, the old chap- 
 lain, and most of the household, were watching 
 at the door. Emma was mixing up, by her 
 mother's direction, and from her private store 
 of drugs, a cordial dose which she pronounced 
 infallible in cases of heart-sickness or nervous 
 affection. But the baron gave his advice for 
 " a possett of good muscadine, with nutmeg, 
 ginger, and other spices, as worth all the pre- 
 scriptions of the doctors, from Galen down to 
 Simon Hartezbraten, who had dosed and did 
 
206 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 little good to the family, for the last two dozen 
 years and more. 1 " 
 
 Agnes, judging her friend's anxiety for an 
 uninterrupted conference, requested Freda to 
 retire and leave the duchess entirely to her care. 
 She confidently expected that the latter would 
 back this by strenuous and decisive words. 
 What then was her surprise to find her, on the 
 contrary, express the greatest reluctance to be 
 left alone with Agnes, whom she entreated, in 
 terms the most affectionate but most decisive, 
 to leave her to herself, and to the sole care of 
 her waiting gentlewoman ? After seeing that 
 she was quite recovered and settled for the 
 night, Agnes consequently retired, wondering 
 not a little at the sudden and apparently capri- 
 cious change, which, however, she forebore to 
 qualify by any harsher epithet. 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 207 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 IT was now evident that terror, at the very 
 -mention of her oppressor's name and his proba- 
 ble appearance in the same house with her, had 
 frustrated all Duchess Anne^s resolution, and 
 totally checked the progress, of her intended 
 revelations to Agnes. As we do not wish to 
 keep our readers in the same state of suspense 
 to which our heroine was thus forced, nor to 
 impress them with any exaggerated notions 
 relative to the secret of the unhappy duchess, 
 we will briefly state the circumstances of her 
 intercourse with Scotus, and the matter which 
 so particularly weighed on her mind. 
 
 Enough has been explained, from her own 
 
208 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 lips, of the unholy mastery he had obtained 
 over her ; and her character, accounting for the 
 facility of his conquest, may have in some mea- 
 sure betrayed itself already. The Duchess of 
 Saxe-Coburg possessed, with many qualities 
 highly amiable and with a considerable share of 
 talent, that curious but not uncommon failing 
 of sensitive women, which gives them a positive 
 pride in a weakness even greater than is usual 
 to their sex. 
 
 The wilful submission to some tyranny as a 
 title to compassion, or the wish for misfortunes 
 merely to have the privilege of proclaiming 
 oneself unhappy, seem inconceivable failings of 
 the female mind. Yet we find them at times 
 exert a powerful influence, preventing some 
 from breaking away from their misery, and 
 prompting others to provoke and exaggerate 
 their distresses. 
 
 It would be scarcely fair to rank the Duchess 
 of Saxe-Coburg in a class of beings so pitia- 
 ble. She was deeply tinged with the mor- 
 
AGNES BE MANSFELDT. 209 
 
 bid vanity which is the base of such weak- 
 ness. But she had too much pride to admit of 
 its taking possession altogether of her character; 
 and had not the superstition of the age led her 
 to believe firmly in the supernatural power of 
 Scotus, she had never yielded to his despotism. 
 
 The machinations by which this practised 
 impostor worked on her may be easily imagined, 
 when her helpless situation and her ardent dis- 
 position are recollected. The duke, her hus- 
 band, volatile and dissipated, was glad to leave 
 her as much as possible to herself, and the 
 society of this new acquaintance, and to escape 
 from the monotony of reproachful tenderness 
 with which she ever received him. But his 
 early affection at times brought him back, as 
 fond and ardent as ever ; while his ample re- 
 liance on her honour left him at all times secure 
 for his own. 
 
 The designs of the Italian adventurer were 
 manifold. But he soon saw that his best chance 
 of success was in regard to those which had 
 
210 AGXES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 reference to pecuniary gain. He at least re- 
 solved to prosecute them first, as most likely to 
 lead to those which he kept in reserve. He 
 calculated that if he could once involve his in- 
 tended victim in some grand scheme of money 
 embarrassment, he would have her completely 
 in his power for all purposes. He therefore 
 turned all his efforts towards that point. He 
 had previously exhausted the scanty stores of 
 the duke, whose great expenses, in an extrava- 
 gant establishment and carousings of enormous 
 cost, together with his profuse expenditure for 
 scientific schemes, left him but little to be 
 swindled of. The duchess herself had still less 
 at command ; for a generous disposition kept 
 her always poor as to mere money. Bat she 
 was rich in the possession of most magnificent 
 jewels. Few princesses of her time, of higher 
 rank even, were so abundantly supplied with 
 those splendid ornaments, to which the extrava- 
 gance of fashion in those times gave an impor- 
 tance even beyond their intrinsic value. It was 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 211 
 
 just at this period that Elizabeth of England 
 was issuing sumptuary laws, to restrain a pro- 
 fusion in her nobility which sovereign princes 
 wished to limit to themselves. Those of Ger- 
 many often exhibited on their persons as much 
 as two or three times the worth of their yearly 
 revenues; hoping by those displays to dazzle 
 the eyes of their subjects, if they could not 
 altogether blind them to the comparative insig- 
 nificance of their rulers. Anne of Saxony, 
 though the youngest was also the favourite 
 daughter of her parents ; and from them as 
 well as her uncle Maurice she had received 
 numerous jewels, besides the presents lavished 
 on her by her husband and his family, on her 
 marriage and afterwards. It was on those 
 accumulated stores that the mercenary eyes of 
 Scotus were fixed, and for the obtaining of 
 which every other as bad, but not as base, 
 design was put in abeyance. 
 
 We must not stop whatever interest our tale 
 may possess, by dwelling on anterior circum- 
 
212 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 stances, the result of which is already known to 
 our readers. Scotus obtained possession of the 
 jewels ; having first completely subdued the 
 mind of their too credulous owner, to the belief 
 in his integrity as well as the conviction of his 
 power. He had succeeded in persuading her 
 that for the furtherance of his project to bring 
 back the wandering affections of her husband, 
 some inestimable and almost un purchasable ac- 
 cessaries were required, to obtain which a sum 
 of money was wanting quite beyond his com - 
 mand ; and she had no fund on which to draw 
 for it. The many attempts already made to 
 effect the purpose she had so much at heart, 
 and with such varied and altogether such im- 
 perfect success, had so involved her in the 
 Italian's plans, and so instigated her to persist 
 to the final accomplishment of her hopes, that 
 she could not retreat, even if she would, with- 
 out incurring his reproaches or exciting his 
 revenge. In the early parts of their inter- 
 course he had insinuated himself completely 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 213 
 
 into her admiration and good opinion. As it 
 advanced he had entirely succeded in making 
 himself an object of dread. She looked on him 
 at length as a being of superior power, and 
 capable of any means for its exertion as a sort 
 of malignant genius, by whose agency a good 
 object may be effected, and whose wickedness 
 would stop at nothing for the attainment of a 
 bad one. 
 
 But before she obtained this conviction, the 
 most fatal step of her intercourse with this her 
 evil genius had been taken. Under pretext of 
 examining the jewels and selecting a portion of 
 them, to be placed in the hands of her relative 
 the Margrave of Anspach, as security for a 
 secret loan, Scotus had obtained possession of 
 the whole ; and no sooner had he secured them 
 than he at once threw off the mask, and avowed 
 his intention of making use of some of them for 
 his own purposes, and keeping the rest as a 
 pledge for her secrecy and discretion. In the 
 mean time persisting that he had the power of 
 
214 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 bringing back the duke to his allegiance, and 
 promising that he would complete that object, 
 besides securing to her a harvest of some mys- 
 tical and indescribable happiness, of the nature 
 of which he said she was not yet capable of 
 forming a notion. 
 
 A moment's reflection told the unfortunate 
 duchess that she was completely in this wretch's 
 power. During the process of his various 
 spells and incantations, he had from time to 
 time obtained from her sundry personal tokens, 
 such as locks of her hair, trinkets containing 
 amulets and love charms, and some signatures 
 of her name, on scraps of paper to which the 
 expert juggler had appended sentences in re- 
 semblance of her writing, and conveying senti- 
 ments of most criminal tendency. These he 
 without hesitation assured her he would produce, 
 in confirmation of a direct accusation against 
 her conjugal fidelity, did she dare to reveal the 
 fact of his being the possessor of the jewels ; 
 and to conceal his iniquity, he made her con- 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 215 
 
 sent to a fabricated story of their being stolen. 
 To give a greater appearance of probability 
 to the tale, Scotus took every measure that in- 
 genious villany could devise ; he made openings 
 in the windows and door-panels of the apart- 
 ment where the jewels were usually deposited, 
 left foot-prints on the floors and traces in the 
 garden, where forcible entry was supposed to 
 have been effected, taking care to have those of 
 a size different to his own feet ; fixed a ladder 
 against the garden wall, and finally he placed 
 one or two of the empty caskets on the line of 
 probable flight, which the imagined robber 
 might most naturally have taken. 
 
 Grievous was the regret with which the un- 
 fortunate duchess found herself entangled in 
 such a web of deceit and danger. But com- 
 promised and committed as she was, she knew 
 not what to do ; and felt escape to be utterly 
 hopeless. She was buoyed up, also, by the be- 
 lief that after all she should be made happy by 
 the very machinations which now caused her 
 
216 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 such misery. As to the real and right course 
 to be pursued a full confession to her husband, 
 and an exposure of the wretch who had so 
 worked on her for her own dishonour she 
 dared not harbour the thought. Dread of the 
 duke*'s anger, of the Italian's vengeance, of 
 public disgrace, all kept her silent ; and mixed 
 with all there was that infatuated expectation 
 of ultimate good, which had her mind been left 
 in its own beautiful purity, she had known to 
 be incompatible with such base means. 
 
 The fabricated details of the robbery were 
 sent abroad and believed. Suspicion never fell 
 on the real culprit, or on his hapless associate. 
 So far it might be supposed all went well. 
 But it was then, in fact, that her anguish of 
 mind began; for among the many objects on 
 whom calumny endeavoured to fix the stigma 
 of infamy the duke her husband was himself 
 included ! His extravagance and his debts 
 were the pretences on which the daring insinua- 
 tions were based ; and the original propagator 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 217 
 
 of this monstrous slander was, as our readers 
 will readily believe, Scotus the Italian. But 
 those who were not in the secret of his infamy in 
 vain endeavoured to trace the author; several 
 persons being, however, most ready to propa- 
 gate the vile invention. 
 
 It was the fate of Anne of Saxony, like al- 
 most every other princess who marries out of 
 her own immediate country, to be followed to 
 that of her husband by several household syco- 
 phants, who invariably endeavour to breed dis- 
 content in the mind of their mistress, magnifying 
 the demerits of her adopted home, decrying 
 whatever is good; and when, as in her case, 
 the wife happens to be of a more elevated family 
 or haughtier lineage than the sovereign she is 
 mated with, instilling on every possible occasion 
 disparaging comparisons between what was her's 
 by the chance of birth and that which she has 
 chosen. Few princesses have the good sense to 
 perceive what a bad compliment is concealed 
 under this flattery; and there was certainly 
 
 VOL. I. L 
 
218 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 much in the situation of the Duchess of Saxe- 
 Coburg to excuse her for not forming an excep- 
 tion. But when, emboldened by her facility in 
 permitting such liberties as those, one or two 
 sneaking dependents dared to insinuate their 
 belief in the calumny against her husband's 
 honour, her indignant refutation was propor- 
 tioned to her knowledge of his innocence. Even 
 had she not had such fatal proof of the latter 
 in her own consciousness, she had as certainly 
 repelled the outrageous supposition. And no 
 answer could be ventured to her solemnly-urged 
 questions " How could a prince, a knight, a 
 gentleman, stoop to so vile an act ? or how 
 could it be necessary for him, who had only to 
 express a want, to hint a wish, and all that was 
 her's on earth, not merely ornamental baubles, 
 but the minutest necessaries of life, had been 
 laid at his feet ?" 
 
 Even those who believed the monstrous ca- 
 lumny were struck dumb by this reasoning. 
 But it was soon turned into a new subject of 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 219 
 
 praise to the conscience-stricken utterer, who 
 was lauded still higher than ever for her im- 
 puted magnanimous forbearance; while she, 
 who could by one sentence have confessed and 
 established the truth, dared not open her lips. 
 It was then no wonder that she was miserable, 
 nor were her expressions of mental anguish 
 exaggerated. Few things are more distressing 
 to an ingenuous mind than the necessity of sub- 
 mitting to undeserved praise. And when it is 
 at the expense of another's innocence and honour, 
 it must be excruciating. 
 
 Unable longer to bear the sight of her hus- 
 band, of her tyrant, or of the scene of transac- 
 tions which so sunk her in her own respect, the 
 duchess at last resolved to remove for awhile 
 from Coburg. She availed herself of the 
 opportunity afforded by the Conference of 
 Cologne, to which the idle, the curious, or it 
 might be, as in her own case, the unhappy, 
 were flocking from many parts of Germany, in 
 search of pleasure. Obtaining the ready per- 
 L 2 
 
220 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 mission of the duke, she resolved to invite her- 
 self, as has been told, for a few weeks' visit to 
 Baron Von Kriechlingen, the old friend of her 
 family, whose daughters had been long known 
 to her as children ; but the facility thus given 
 of meeting again, in uncontrolled intercourse, 
 her beloved and confidential friend Agnes de 
 Mansfeldt, was the chief inducement with the 
 duchess. She wrote her such a letter as could 
 not fail being answered in person. And it was 
 accompanied by the invitation which Duchess 
 Anne had solicited for her friend from the 
 baron's family, and which they, as Agnes's 
 relatives, were delighted to send to her. 
 
 But another consent was required before 
 those projects were put in execution; and it 
 was with the terror of a slave soliciting a boon 
 from his taskmaster that the duchess requested 
 it from Scotus. He readily granted his sanc- 
 tion, for her plan precisely tallied with his own. 
 Having secured the means of appearing at 
 Cologne, in the style which would, as he had 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 221 
 
 good reason to believe, be the best passport to 
 the notice of the elector, he had a double mo- 
 tive in approving of the duchess taking the same 
 destination. He thus secured her against the 
 chance of any betrayal of their joint secret, to 
 which conscience or accident might lead her 
 were he away; and he was not sorry to have 
 such a fear-fettered instrument as she, to aid in ' 
 whatever design might spring up during his 
 expedition^ And among the half-formed pro- 
 jects in which he indulged were some connected 
 with that incomparable being, whose beauty, 
 virtue, and talent, was the never-ceasing theme 
 of her scarce too partial friend's eulogiums. 
 Thus Scotus knew Agnes before he saw her 
 even ; and the impression he so accurately ob- 
 served her personal charms to have made on the 
 elector, during the period in which they both 
 saw her for the first time, determined him to 
 obtain her, if possible, as an auxiliary in his 
 schemes on her susceptible admirer. 
 
 As soon as Scotus was assured of Duchess 
 Anne's arrangements, he set out from Coburg ; 
 
222 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 and he found at Hamburg many lapidaries and 
 moneyers as speculating capitalists were then 
 called to facilitate the conversion of a portion 
 of his ill-gotten treasure into cash. Purchases 
 of various kinds, horses, carriages, and apparel, 
 were quickly made ; and a retinue hired, propor- 
 tioned to a rank much more elevated than that 
 assumed by the adventurer, who now dubbed 
 himself count, and took airs that would have 
 been unbecoming in a prince. He had soon 
 insinuated himself into the good graces of the 
 commercial world of Hamburgh. Where gain 
 was the chief object of men's lives, he who had 
 wealth was sure of respect, or what passed for 
 such. But is this reproach only due to the 
 Hamburgh moneyers of the sixteenth century ? 
 How many puritanical pretenders to-day seek 
 out, associate with, and fawn to, the basest and 
 meanest of mankind, whose means allow them 
 to pander to the appetites of those sordid syco- 
 phants who at once feed on and despise them ? 
 
 The next move in the great game now played 
 by Scotus, brought him to Cologne. His pro- 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 223 
 
 gress there has been related. The effect pro- 
 duced on the duchess by the written announce- 
 ment of his arrival, by her passing view of him 
 in the procession, and the threatened certainty 
 of his appearance in the very house, which was 
 no longer one of refuge from his presence or of 
 relief against her wretchedness, have been also 
 told. And we so conclude this retrospective 
 episode in the drama, of which, after all, these 
 were not alone the chief actors. 
 
 While the duchess lay in all the tortures of 
 solitude, and her friends either watched over or 
 lamented her situation, and the domestics of the 
 establishment were running to and fro in va- 
 rious directions, and the whole of Kriechlingen 
 house was in confusion, old Karl Kreutzer 
 sat in the well-stuffed comfort of his large 
 leathern chair, close to the iron stove of his 
 lodge, and in an atmosphere that would have 
 suffocated any less salamandrine personage than 
 a German house-porter. 
 
 It has often struck us as a question of cu- 
 
224* AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 rious speculation how did the good folks of 
 Germany contrive to kill thought before the 
 introduction of tobacco and the invention of 
 pipes taught men to smother it and smoke-dry 
 their own intellects, after the present fashion ? 
 It is a problem now hard to be solved. But 
 we must only hope, for the honour of the olden 
 time, that modern dullness was a parallel im- 
 portation with that of ".the Virginian weed, 1 ' 
 and that there was vivacity and vigour, of 
 mind and body both, ere our King James blew 
 his " counterblaste " against that "precious 
 stinke, hateful to the nose, harmful to the 
 brain, hurtful to the lungs, and in the black 
 fumes thereof nearest resembling the horrible 
 Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless. 1 "* 
 
 Karl Kreutzer was, however, as stupid an 
 individual as one might meet even in the porter's 
 lodge of a German baron to-day ; only alive, 
 but that keenly enough, on the one particular 
 point of his own interest. And while he now 
 
 * King James's works" A Counterblaste to Tobacco.'* 
 
AGNES DE MANSl'ELDT. 225 
 
 sat ruminating on the events of the last twelve 
 hours, he mentally cast up, as was his wont, 
 the debtor and creditor of his day's account, 
 and strove at last to strike a balance. 
 
 " So !" soliloquized he-" so ! The day is 
 well nigh over the evening has set in and 
 night is fast coming on. Good ! and what has 
 this new day done for Karl Kreutzer ? I am 
 some fifteen hours older than I was when I 
 rose with the sun. How much the wiser or 
 the richer am I at his down-going? Two 
 golden ducats for vails, besides what I may 
 reckon on from this young duchess for carrying 
 her the letter. Got wot what it was worth ! but 
 the messenger who bare it and she was a won- 
 drous wild one gave me cause to hold it as a 
 missive of high price, if so be it the happiness 
 of this fair lady was dependent thereon. But 
 what matters that to me ? Is it my place to 
 pry into the secrets of the house masters or 
 visitors, servants or followers ? no, no ; a wise 
 porter has always an open hand for what comes 
 L 3 
 
226 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 in, and a closed eye for what passes out and 
 easy it is to pass at Ms blind side, who can 
 blink right or left as occasion requires. Is it 
 my concern, forsooth ! if the groom of the 
 chambers steals forth at night, and returns 
 with a gentle tap at the window by day -break ? 
 am I to ask whence comes it ? as he puts a 
 broad silver piece on my palm with his right 
 hand, and places the finger of his left on his 
 closed lips, as much as to say mum ! Would 
 that be becoming ? Or if a veiled lady enters 
 softly at night, and trips up the back stairs 
 towards the young chaplain's attic, would 
 it be gallant or civil to say aback ! when 
 I know she will come stealthily down ere 
 cock-crow, and his reverence by her side, 
 to give her a blessing as she passes the gate, 
 and me a guilder or two as I cautiously 
 draw the bolt behind her ? Am I, Karl 
 Kreutzer, a censor of morals to wicked Cologne ? 
 alas and alack ! I should have a hard task of 
 it. And if the kitchen-boy carries out the 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 227 
 
 market panniers as heavy as the cook sends them 
 in, is it my place to look under the covers and 
 count fragments or am I to ask if the flasks 
 be full or empty which the cellar-man takes 
 forth in his broad breeches-pockets or refuse 
 the cold pastry, or pot of conserves, or the 
 choppine of Rhenish, or bottle of Malvoisie, 
 which my fellow-servants drop in the lodge as 
 they pass by in token of old kindness ? Is a 
 porter a thief-catcher, or an informer, or a spy ? 
 Gottbewahre ! If he turn such a meddler and 
 make-mischief my branch of the Christmas 
 tree would run small risk of breaking down !* 
 What is it to me if the young Baron Ulrick 
 slips into the courtyard and lingers in the gar- 
 den, after he has taken leave at night and is 
 believed by his uncle and aunt to be safe in his 
 
 * Old Karl here alluded to the German custom which 
 still exists most amiably of hanging presents of various 
 kinds on branches cut from the tops of young fir-trees, 
 which are lighted up and decorated in a very tasteful 
 fashion, in every house from palace to cottage on Christ- 
 mas eve. 
 
228 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 college at Bonn ; while Frauline Freda, Hea- 
 ven bless her ! steals out to keep him company, 
 albeit her worthy parents, my good masters, 
 fancy her listening to Pastor ScragglekopfVs 
 lecture at the congregation's church hard by ? 
 Would it be meet for me, who winked at the 
 wild doings of her father in his early days, to 
 thwart the innocent pleasures of the daughter 
 now that he is old ? Who goes there ? who 
 draws the postern bolt ?" 
 
 " It is only I, good Karl, going forth in 
 haste for drugs to the pharmacy in the Kirch- 
 gasse for the sick lady above," said the out- 
 goer, one of the varlets, so despatched by 
 orders of the baroness, for some medicament 
 of which her store was deficient ; and taking 
 advantage of the errand to carry off some of 
 the day's spoils, for sale at a not distant 
 tavern. 
 
 u And a marvellous slow gate dost thou go 
 at, honest Simon, 1 ' said Karl, half aloud. " He 
 who halts on his road to the doctor hurries on 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 229 
 
 his way to the fiend, saith the proverb and 
 methinks that large bundle under thy cloak is 
 a sort of passport for thy safe journey ! But 
 never mind ! It is no matter of mine ! 
 
 c When the thief creepeth, 
 The watchman sleepeth,' 
 
 as the old rhyme has it. And God's mercy f 
 let him who is paid for it look to it, as the 
 saying is. No ! never be it told of Karl 
 Kreutzer that he peached against his fellows. 
 Thirty years and more have I sat in this lodge, 
 and never wronged my masters myself, nor 
 meddled with those who did. Gott in ffim- 
 mel ! 1 can sleep with a clear conscience." 
 
 With these words, Karl betook himself again 
 to his easy chair, which a keener perception of 
 right and wrong might have perhaps made an 
 uneasy one. But he was of that class of men 
 who deceive themselves with as little remorse 
 as they cheat others, or let them be cheated, 
 when their own interest is at stake. 
 
 Scarcely had the porter began to doze, when 
 
230 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 he was aroused by a gentle tap at the street 
 casement close to the postern, such as he had 
 alluded to ere while as the return signal of the 
 truant groom of the chambers, as well as others 
 of the household night wanderers. 
 
 " Who's there?' 1 briskly cried Karl, without 
 stirring from his seat or moving limb or muscle ; 
 long habit having accustomed him to sleep, as 
 it were, like a hare, with his eyes open, and to 
 call out instinctively at the slightest sound. 
 
 " Come hither, kind master Karl ?" said a 
 voice at the window. 
 
 " Aye, aye, it is ever thus kind master 
 Karl, good master Karl, honest master Karl, 
 whenever they have anything to ask for. But 
 when otherwise, this honest, good, kind gossip 
 of their' s is only a surly, churlish, dogged old 
 fellow. And were I but to lose my place 
 what would it be then ?" 
 
 " Good Karl, it is me open the gate !" 
 
 u And who the fiend are you ?" said the old 
 man grumbling as he left his seat and moved 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 231 
 
 towards the window. " You forsooth ! I am ex- 
 pected to know every one, am I ? Here it was 
 only this forenoon that an ill-favoured varlet I 
 never before clapped eyes upon called out that 
 he was my friend Caspar Schott while a 
 ragged-skirted wench, as strange-faced as im- 
 pudent, would have thrust her squalling child 
 into my lodge for old acquaintance sake ! and 
 another " 
 
 " Master Karl !" said the voice, and a gentle 
 tap accompanied the call. 
 
 " Well, well, I'm coming a'nt I ? Walk in 
 and tell your business, be ye whom ye may," 
 exclaimed the testy Cerberus, drawing the cord 
 that raised the spring-latch of the postern, and 
 looking at the same time, like a trusty sentinel, 
 from the one-paned window, to mark if the new 
 comer was one who might or might not pass at 
 his blind side. But when he caught a full 
 view of the old woman who had so bribed and 
 so frightened him in the morning, he started 
 back a pace or two, and his knees knocked to- 
 
232 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 gether as she stepped into the lodge and closed 
 the door behind her. 
 
 " Kind Master Karl, I told you we should 
 meet again," said she, unceremoniously seating 
 herself (in a very unfeminine posture as Karl 
 thought) on a low stool beside the stove. 
 
 " Sit down in your chair," continued she; 
 and Karl obeyed mechanically, albeit unused 
 to have the honours of his strong-hold done by 
 another. 
 
 " And now that you are seated again on 
 your throne like a king, let me look at your 
 palm that I may see what good will betide ye 
 to-night." 
 
 Karl had a particular horror of chiromancy 
 and all sorts of fortune-telling, ever since an 
 old witch had prophecied in his boyhood that 
 he would live a bachelor and die a beggar. 
 The first part of the prophecy he had been ever 
 afraid to belie, and the latter was a subject of 
 perpetual dread and growing avarice. No- 
 thing but his expectation of gain from his con- 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 233 
 
 nexion with the old woman could have induced 
 him to hold forth his open hand ; and while he 
 did so, he said in a plaintive tone, 
 
 " Good dame, speak no ill of me or my for- 
 tune. I hate to hear bad news, all king as you 
 would christen me aye as much as the mo- 
 narch of France himself; and they say King 
 Henry has just put down the Paris almanacs, 
 rather than suffer their predictions to go abroad 
 and a good example it is for the world. 
 Deal gently with my hand-lines and lineaments, 
 kind mother ! Don't tell me that I am to be 
 hanged or drowned I like not to look forward 
 on a violent end ; and howbeit I must die in 
 poverty, let it be at least on a pallet of clean 
 straw. There f 
 
 And with the concluding word he stretched 
 forth his hand, turning aside his head the 
 while, as though he had been holding out his 
 limb for amputation. Nor could the first 
 cut of the surgeon's knife have caused a more 
 sudden start to a nervous patient than did the 
 
234> AGNES DE MANSFELBT. 
 
 slap on the open palm given to Karl Kreutzer 
 by that of his companion produce in him. 
 
 " There !" exclaimed the operator, echoing 
 the porter's word, " hold your fist now firm 
 shut, and good luck will be sure to come to it."" 
 
 Karl religiously performed this bidding, 
 though his nerves tingled with pain from fin- 
 gers 1 point to elbow; arid he stared without 
 speaking a word, as the old woman went on. 
 
 " Well Karl, you did your business like a 
 good messenger this morning. The drug work- 
 ed well." 
 
 " The drug ! Gottbewahre ! I gave no drug 
 I deny it I call the town council and his 
 highness the elector to witness, if she dies by 
 foul means it is none of my doing," cried the 
 terrified porter, the dread of being even by 
 implication a poisoner overcoming all other 
 fear ; and as he spoke he attempted to rise, 
 but he was held fast by a strong grasp, his 
 hand opening in the struggle, and two double 
 ducatoons, with a small billet in the form of 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 235 
 
 that he had delivered in the morning, falling 
 on the floor. 
 
 " See, see man, what a shower of good things 
 falls from your, own hands. What are you 
 scared at ? Drug is but a mystical word 
 that means letter in plain speech, so take up 
 your money, and that other gentle missive, 
 and let both go quickly the same road as the 
 last." 
 
 " Oh, if so all is right good ! good !" said 
 the porter, ever convinced by the explanation 
 that was accompanied by a fee. 4C I am willing, 
 worthy dame, to do the service that is so nobly 
 requited, but I must protest against false 
 alarms. I am easily shaken by the fear of 
 foul play, and the duchess being so fearfully 
 ill " 
 
 " What do you say ? ill ?" cried the old 
 woman, grasping the porter's arm. 
 
 " Aye, by my soul, good dame, and if they 
 speak truly through the mansion, grievously 
 ill. I hope, I hope dame, nought of evil was 
 
236 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 conveyed in that silk-bound scented billet no 
 poisonous perfumes, no unction, that touching 
 the skin takes the life no " 
 
 " Hush, master porter, hush ! Do you not 
 hear a tap at your street window ?" 
 
 " Body o' me ! yes. You have a keen ear 
 for a signal tap, good dame, to hear it before 
 Karl Kreutzer !" 
 
 While the porter spoke, his companion 
 sprang from her stool with great agility, and 
 hid herself behind a curtain, which hung across 
 the alcove that contained the functionary's 
 bed. In the mean time Karl pulled his string, 
 opened the postern, and gave admittance to a 
 man wrapped in a dark mantle. 
 
 " Save you, master porter !" said he, with an 
 unbending air, and at the same time keeping 
 his face closely concealed. " These are busy 
 times ; you have several strangers in the house, 
 have you not !" 
 
 " Many more than I wish for, and some that 
 might be well spared no offence, sir stranger," 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 237 
 
 replied Karl. " And what may it be that 
 brings you to swell the number ?" 
 
 " We are alone, good fellow ?" asked the 
 other, in an authoritative tone. Karl, wishing 
 to meet this by his usual self-important style, 
 and at the same time held doubly in check 
 by the stranger's haughty deportment and the 
 fear of his discovering the secrets of the alcove, 
 replied to one question by a few others. 
 
 " Do you see any one else here ? Have you 
 ever heard that I was a married man ? Do 
 you suspect me of concealing a listener behind 
 the curtain to catch every stray idler that 
 chooses to come and pump me for news ?" 
 
 " No offence, no offence, master porter ; it is 
 only that I wished just to obtain your good 
 offices with regard to one of the lady visitors, 
 who now abide here." 
 
 " Why as for that my master, I am never 
 unwilling to do a good turn (as there are those 
 not far off who could testify) when the fair sex 
 is concerned; howbeit I have ever kept clear of 
 
238 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 them on my own score but there may be a 
 fate in that," said Karl, softened by the chance 
 of a coming douceur, " and as I always con- 
 sider " 
 
 66 So ! so ! enough, enough ! wilt thou then 
 
 undertake to deliver this secretly to What 
 
 means thy grinning ? Off hands, fellow !" said 
 the stranger, stepping back, his sentence 
 broken, and his temper, it would seem, some- 
 what ruffled, by the imperfect winks which 
 Karl dared not bring decidedly to bear on the 
 alcove, and by the downward pluck he gave to 
 the stranger's mantle, as the latter thought with 
 a design of uncovering his face. 
 
 " Fellow ! off hands ! pot% tausend ! Is it 
 thus a favour is to be required ? Is that lan- 
 guage from him who asks to him who is ex- 
 pected to grant? Gott in ffimmel! but 
 the world is turning round, and the wrong 
 way, methinks ! Moreover this is no time to 
 send missives to a lady who is sore sick. 
 Better come to-morrow; no one may now 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 239 
 
 approach the Duchess Anne ; better come to- 
 morrow." 
 
 Of this speech of the porter, the angry parts 
 were all affected, and the latter prompted by a 
 wish to keep the communication, which he took 
 it for granted was for the duchess, free from 
 the reach of the old woman. He was too 
 stupid to recollect that there was another 
 strange lady in the house. 
 
 " Verily, my honest fellow, thou art wroth 
 with little reason, and thy ire overmasters thy 
 wit. I meant not any offence nor is this 
 missive intended for the Duchess of Saxe-Co- 
 burg. I would confide it to thee to be delivered 
 to Countess Agnes de Mansfeldt. Wilt thou 
 take charge of it ?"" 
 
 " O ho! The Countess Agnes! oh, that is a 
 very different affair. Aye, marry, that I will, 
 for she seems a kind-hearted lady. She smiled 
 like an angel when I went up to the balcony 
 to-day with the letter for hem ! hem ! When 
 I went up to the gallery" 
 
240 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 " Well, well ! all that is unimportant now. 
 Take means to place this in the young coun- 
 tess's hands by noon to-morrow, and you will do 
 me a favour, and yourself no disservice. Let 
 this be the token!" 
 
 With these words the stranger slipped a 
 piece of money into the porter's hand, and with 
 a hasty and haughty adieu, he disappeared. 
 
 " Good night! Sleep well !" said Karl as the 
 postern closed ; and ere he could turn round 
 towards the alcove, its secret tenant had nimbly 
 darted from it, and snatched the letter from his 
 hand. 
 
 " Hold, dame, hold ! or rather, let me say, 
 let loose your hold That fair missive"* 
 
 " Peace fool, peace !" exclaimed the other, 
 stamping his foot aye his! But our readers 
 have already detected the sex of this mysterious 
 person. And poor Karl Kreutzer could no 
 longer be deceived in it, as he looked gaping on 
 his companion, whose tall figure, springing up 
 suddenly from his former stooping posture, 
 
AGNES DE MAXSFELDT, 241 
 
 appeared, in its female drapery, gigantic ; 
 whose voice sounded like the explosion of a 
 falconet; and the grasp of whose hand seemed 
 to have crushed the sinews and muscles of the 
 electrified porter's arm. 
 
 The keen eye of the stranger darted in an 
 instant into the folds of the paper, which he 
 held up to the lamp that burned on the table; 
 and he saw its contents with a glance. He 
 then placed it in Karl's hand ; and uttering, in 
 a most impressive tone, an injunction to deliver 
 both missives with the greatest care and speed, 
 he tucked up his attire in the compactest man- 
 ner, darted through the postern, and disap- 
 peared in a twinkling, baffling the rapid move- 
 ment of old KaiTs thrust-out head and the 
 search of his peering eyes. 
 
 " Herr Jesus /" muttered the latter, as he 
 withdrew into his den, " well might Pastor 
 Scragglekopft say in his discourse, 'fore yes- 
 terday, that intrigue and mystery would spread 
 tneir dark mantle over Cologne, and the devil 
 
 VOL. i. M 
 
242 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 hold fast the corners during the conference. It 
 is come to pass, it is come to pass ! The holy 
 man spoke the words of truth and now let 
 every one look to his own. Then what can this 
 new secret be, concerning the young countess 
 above ? It feels heavier than a mere missive, 
 or a copy of love-lines sent by some crazy poet 
 for a compliment. Let me see, but first let me 
 look at the fee the viaticum as the chaplain 
 laughingly calls his little present to pay the 
 travelling expenses of these adventuring letters. 
 It felt very like a guilder but that strapping 
 masquerader took the power of touch out of 
 my fingers by his rude grasp. What ! a broad 
 doubloon ! Gott in Himmel! but I thought 
 he was a brave gallant, that proud-spoken 
 cloak-wrapped messenger. Now for a peep 
 
 into his who's there again ? In the name 
 
 of all the fiends, who's there ? Is there to be 
 
 no peace for me to-night ? Who's there, I say ?" 
 
 " Open, Karl, open quickly ! I'm out of 
 
 breath with running from the pharmacy open, 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 243 
 
 open !" cried the servant outside, knocking 
 loudly on the postern the while. 
 
 " Running from the pharmacy ! running 
 from the taverners', lying knave !" muttered 
 Karl, as he leisurely pulled the bolt-string, 
 having first placed the two letters in a strong 
 box, for after examination. " Ah, it is you, 
 honest Simon ?" continued he, as the varlet 
 entered, " how those lazy apothekes keep folk 
 waiting." 
 
 " Aye that they do, Karl is the duchess no 
 worse for the delay ?" asked the breathless 
 man, passing in speed towards the stair-case. 
 
 " What know I of duchesses you dog ! up, 
 up stairs with your drugs. If she is the worse 
 for tarrying, ten to one she will be little the 
 better for taking. Ah, Gott in Himmel ! may 
 I be saved from the two great curses of life 
 fortune-telling and physic ! But Heaven pre- 
 serve this duchess meanwhile she has, as yet, 
 been no thorn in the side of honest Karl 
 Kreutzer ;" and so muttering into the broad 
 
 M2 
 
244 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 end, as it might be said, of his own trumpet, 
 this gentle note of self-praise and selfishness 
 died away, without even an echo for the ear of 
 the world. How many a more important indi- 
 vidual than the old porter is this moment, even 
 while we write, silently breathing out a some- 
 what similar tribute to the omnipotence of ego- 
 tism ! 
 
 Just at the time that old Karl Kreutzer was 
 murmuring this illustration of the universal 
 principle, the Elector-archbishop of Cologne 
 was throwing off a dark cloak, with the aid of 
 Walram his faithful valet, in that private cabi- 
 net in which he had held the interview with 
 Count Nuenar. 
 
 " Thou art sure, Walram," said he. " that 
 none observed me going out, nor as I entered 
 by the private way ?" 
 
 " None, your highness. I watched care- 
 fully, and led off one or two stragglers of the 
 household who lingered in the west corridor 
 none others were in the way of observation." 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT, 245 
 
 '* Right, Walram, thou hast done well 
 give me a sober suit of black now, I must 
 visit the nuncio to-night. Say not that I 
 have been abroad thou knowest I do not 
 wish " 
 
 " To have your highnesses private charities 
 pryed into I know it well." 
 
 " Ah ! Walram," said the elector smiling, 
 " thou art the best of confidents. Thou 
 wouldst persuade me that thou knowest not 
 my secret doings, and conceal even from thy- 
 self what I confide to thee. Thou, at least, 
 will never betray me, Walram ?" 
 
 " Good, your highness, I have nought to be- 
 tray I know nothing of your highness that 
 might not be told to the town council, and 
 lauded by Johan Hilpaert, your worst enemy.'' 
 
 " Go to, Walram you flatter too well," 
 continued the elector, as he pursued the opera- 
 tion of the toilette. " So ! this grave attire is 
 good for to-night ; but for to-morrow's dinner, 
 Walram, my last new suit of purple and gold, 
 
246 
 
 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 and all my rings all my orders remember. 
 Walram, all." 
 
 " Yes, your highness." 
 
 " Thou knowest the whole conference feasts 
 with me and neither proud d'Arschot, nor 
 vain-glorious Terranova must even approach 
 me in splendour !" 
 
 To these last words, uttered but half aloud 
 and even that unconsciously, the prudent con- 
 fident made no reply. 
 
 u All shall be ready, your highness. And 
 for supper at Baron Von Kriechlingen's, how 
 will it please your highness to be dressed ?" 
 
 " How ? as at dinner, to be sure, in my 
 most proud display ! " 
 
 " Your highness if I dare remind you of 
 it, said 'twas a private supper-party." 
 
 " And so it is, Walram so private that I 
 would not have my going bruited much abroad. 
 But nevertheless, I would appear at it in a 
 blaze of splendour. Yes ! she shall see me as Se- 
 mele saw Jove, but not be consumed like her!" 
 
AGNES DE MANSFKLDT. 24? 
 
 " Your highness ?" said the valet, stepping 
 close to his lord, curiosity overcoming for a 
 moment his previous caution. 
 
 " I spoke not or if I did 'twas not for thee, 
 good Walram. Has Count Scotus taken pos- 
 session of his apartment ?" 
 
 " He has, your highness, an hour gone.* 1 
 
 " I will visit him there," said the elector, 
 waving his hand as he left the cabinet, and 
 went into a narrow passage leading to the 
 apartment allotted to the Italian's use, which 
 opened out upon a terrace in the extensive gar- 
 dens of the palace. 
 
 " He might as well have spoken it outright 
 at once I shall soon know the secret, be it 
 what it may,' 1 thought Walram, as his lord 
 disappeared. " But do I not see already that 
 a new amour lifts him up thus above his 
 usual bearing ? And shall I quarrel with that ? 
 no, no, the flood-gates of generosity are ever 
 open when a rich man falls in love and he 
 who stands close by, as I do in this case, 
 
248 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 has only to hold forth his nets to have them 
 filled !" 
 
 During this pithy soliloquy, the elector had 
 reached his guest's apartment ; and entering, 
 without any form of state approach, he found 
 him sitting in a loose robe, with books and 
 papers spread on a table before him ; while his 
 secretary assisted in their arrangement, and a 
 couple of valets were busied in the disposal 
 of various rich articles of dress in the ward- 
 robes around. 
 
 After a few complimentary words exchanged 
 between the assiduous host and the well-pleased 
 guest, the secretary and valets having respect- 
 fully quitted the room the elector's eye was 
 caught by an enamelled miniature which lay 
 on the table. He felt the deep blush which 
 suffused his face, as he started in astonish- 
 ment. 
 
 "Does your highness think it like!" said 
 Scotus, carelessly. 
 
 " Count," replied the elector, in a tone be- 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 249 
 
 tween embarrassment and sternness, " this is a 
 strange coincidence !" 
 
 A rapid suspicion darted across his mind. 
 Could the fair bein who had so fixed his 
 
 <^ 
 
 thoughts have conspired with this Italian to 
 lead him into an intrigue ? 
 
 " Strange ? That your highness should find 
 a friend willing and able to outstrip your 
 wishes ? Take the picture and wear it a lock 
 of her glossy hair is within the enamelled 
 cover." 
 
 " Do you know Countess Agnes de Mans- 
 feldt ?" asked the elector, fixing a keen glance 
 on Scotus. 
 
 4i As your highness does I saw her in the 
 balcony to-day, for the first and only time." 
 
 " Then let me ask and answer me fairly 
 and frankly, count how comes it that you 
 have divined my thoughts? How, that this 
 lovely portrait of a lovelier model lies ready 
 to meet to fascinate me here ?"" 
 
 " How is it, your highness, that the fair 
 M 3 
 
250 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 original's thoughts are fixed on you this mo- 
 ment ? and that the embroidered heart, pierced 
 with your fond device, is now in her trembling 
 hand ?" 
 
 u By Heavens this is too much ! There is 
 jugglery in this!" exclaimed the elector, start- 
 ing back still another step. 
 
 " Jugglery means falsehood Do I speak 
 that or truth ?"" calmly replied the Italian. 
 
 " How know you of that foolish present ? 
 How have you this divining power ? How is 
 it you thus pierce my secret thoughts and un- 
 told actions? Tell me, Count Scotus, for I 
 must be resolved." 
 
 " Am I a man to be thus catechised and thus 
 suspected? were it not better to make my 
 power of use ? This is no common-place amour. 
 Had it been so, a less agency than mine might 
 have sufficed.'" 
 
 " Amour ! agency ! These words are misap- 
 plied I disown the imputation of the one I 
 require not the other." 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 251 
 
 4< Yet the first is a positive fact the latter 
 an invincible necessity. Methinks your high- 
 ness would do well to pause awhile, before you 
 reject clear evidence and predetermined aid." 
 
 " Predetermined !" 
 
 " Your highness must feel the deep convic- 
 tion that I am not speaking lightly and you 
 cannot believe that I am here by mere chance 
 at such a crisis. There is a destiny " 
 
 44 I do believe there is and if I am its sport 
 you may well be its instrument !" said the 
 elector, solemnly ; for he felt one of those 
 sudden impulses of conviction of which minds 
 like his are so susceptible. " Hark ye, Count 
 Scotus," continued he, " you have raised a 
 host of feelings, a crowd of thought, that had 
 no previous existence. You have blown into a 
 flame of wondrous intensity, what was but a 
 mere spark of passing sentiment. I know not 
 how this is I know not rightly my own feel- 
 ings, your influence, nor her power. I am in a 
 maze of perplexed sensation, and spell-drawn 
 
252 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 towards a solution of this exciting mystery. 
 Whether it be fate, or ray own doing, I know 
 not, but certes you have discovered or I be- 
 trayed the bud of an incipient thought, which 
 ripens fast to full-blown passion. Be it so ! I 
 scorn to shrink from aught that may betide. I 
 will go forward in this path and judge at 
 least with my own heart's conviction of the 
 secret workings which hurry me along." 
 
 " Your highness shall want no guide while I 
 am with you." 
 
 " Good, good ! Be it so again ! To-morrow 
 night will tell me more of this. Will you, 
 count, give me this- almost too lovely yet not 
 too flattering effigy ?" 
 
 " It is your highness's own look here !" 
 with these words Scotus touched the spring in 
 the back of the miniature ; and there, in a lock 
 of Agnes^s hair, was evident the initials of her 
 name ingeniously intertwined with those of 
 Ghebhard Truchses, in gold-twisted wire. 
 
 66 ir Tis wondrous strange !" said the elector, 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT 253 
 
 taking the portrait. He gazed on it awhile ; 
 then placed it in his bosom ; and after a few 
 words more, retired. 
 
 We need scarcely add that Scotus himself 
 was the old woman who preceded, so fortunately 
 for his own plans, the visit of the elector to 
 Karl Kreutzer's lodge. And it will be as 
 easily divined that the picture of Agnes was 
 obtained among Duchess Anne's precious trin- 
 kets ; and that the Italian's ingenious fingers 
 had worked the wire-drawn initials together, in 
 the interval of his retiring from the dinner- 
 party, and his going out at night-fall to leave 
 the second billet for his unfortunate victim. 
 The bustle in the palace, and the passing to 
 and fro of his attendants with luggage, books, 
 &c. allowed him to slip out and return unob- 
 served, by the aid of ready-made master-keys, 
 with which he opened at will the garden-gates, 
 as well as those of the mansion itself. 
 
254 AGNES DE MANSFELUT. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE supper party, so anxiously looked for, 
 took place. The expectations of those who 
 reckoned on it as a kind of touchstone to their 
 hopes and their designs were more than fulfilled. 
 Ghebhard Truchses was satisfied that he had 
 found, for the -first time in his life, a woman, 
 whose beauty, manners, and mind were all on a 
 par of lofty elegance, yet whose pride was with- 
 out arrogance, whose vivacity without conceit, 
 and whose modesty without meanness. Thus 
 far one long evening of familiar intercourse 
 enabled our hero unerringly to judge. There 
 was an open dignity on the very surface of 
 Agnes's demeanour, which might be read like 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 255 
 
 an unclasped volume. Truchses did not pre- 
 tend to divine at once the secret springs of her 
 character. In fact his thoughts did not dive so 
 deeply. Who for the first time in society with 
 the being whose attractions captivate his heart, 
 dreams of fathoming the silent channels of 
 her's ? These are the subjects for after-thought. 
 To imagine an immediate inquest into them is 
 to suppose an influence which no woman excites 
 at first sight, because no man believes himself 
 to be at once in love, and nothing else would 
 justify or even suggest such profound inquiry. 
 It is when, after repeated meetings, the lover 
 feels himself enthralled, that he commences an 
 examination which reason tells him to be neces- 
 sary to his future happiness. But then it is 
 too late. His mind has lost its analyzing power. 
 It is imbued with one colour rose, as it has 
 been fragrantly and fancifully called, which 
 tinctures everything, sometimes falsely, but 
 still happily for much that might check the 
 ardour of a mere admirer is seen through pas- 
 
256 
 
 AGXES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 sion's prism, in soft-blending hues of beauty. 
 And, blessed construction of the human mind ! 
 this is not merely for man's deception. For 
 the mysterious action of love is double ; and 
 while it makes the lover see perfection in defect, 
 it often converts the faults of the beloved one 
 into solid elements for mutual delight exciting 
 indolence, controlling vanity, and concentrating 
 a thousand vapoury levities into one pure and 
 chrystalized affection. And what unimagined 
 faculties does not love's radiance bring to light ! 
 But this is perhaps irrelevant at least prema- 
 ture. 
 
 Ghebhard Truchses had sought this meeting 
 with Agnes de Mansfeldt, prepared for its 
 result. His imagination had been highly 
 wrought. He knew he was approaching a rare 
 specimen of female loveliness, and he came like 
 an idolater to the altar of a long-worshipped 
 divinity. He believed besides, or fancied he 
 believed, that an agency more than mortal 
 urged him on. And he was not left in solitude 
 
AG\ 7 ES DE MANSFELDT. 257 
 
 with this inspiring abstraction. Scotus took 
 care that the notion should not evaporate. The 
 night of self-enchantment which Truchses passed 
 alone was followed by a day of artful excite- 
 ment, on the part of him whose influence he 
 courted rather than repelled. His morning 
 labours with his coadjutors of the conference, 
 his dinner duties with those haughty guests, 
 engaged without occupying his mind, and 
 irritated a spirit impatient of control and im- 
 petuous in action. Every hour that brought 
 him nearer to the one he yearned for, was like 
 those which lead a captive to enlargement. 
 And, like him who sees through prison bars the 
 open fields of freedom, he exaggerated the en- 
 joyments from which he was held back if 
 aught, indeed, can over-rate the charms of 
 liberty or the enchantments of love. 
 
 Agnes, in her turn, felt the whole force of 
 the impulsion which had hurried on her enthu- 
 siastic admirer. His animation, his energy, his 
 brilliant display of dress and ornament, the 
 
258 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 flush of excitement in his tone and on his fea- 
 tures, his varied knowledge, brought into play 
 through many channels of wit and eloquence, 
 the flattery of his looks and manner, rather 
 than his words, formed a combination that few 
 women would be able, fewer still desirous, to 
 resist. Agnes acknowledged to herself that she 
 had never met a man of such brilliant manners ; 
 yet she was as unconscious of the power of her 
 own attractions in drawing him out, as are the 
 magnet islands of romance, towards which some 
 stately vessel hurries, on wings swifter than 
 those of the wind. 
 
 But Agnes was not wholly unprepared for 
 the impressions of this scene. She had heard 
 much of the Elector-archbishop of Cologne. 
 The passing view in which she saw him the 
 previous day, the evident attentions he gave to 
 the group of which she formed one, the allusions 
 of Emma, and the characteristic hints of Ulrick 
 had all had their effect. His glowing manner 
 now carried her along with him, in a rapid flow 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 259 
 
 of animated discourse. He sat by her side at 
 supper ; and when the repast was finished he 
 attached himself to her, as if unconsciously, in 
 the saloon to which the party withdrew. The 
 lead in conversation was ceded to him by all 
 present, in right of his talents rather than his 
 rank, so as to obviate the air of arrogant supe- 
 riority which is most odious when it seems sanc- 
 tified by high station. Truchses more than most 
 men blended familiarity with dignity because 
 he affected it less than most. The happy 
 manner which reaches, without straining for, 
 the level of high breeding is a gift, a talent 
 that may not be taught, any more than an ear 
 for music or an eye for painting. Our hero 
 had it in perfection. And the consequence was 
 that every one was at ease with him not be- 
 cause he strove to put them so, but because he 
 made no effort, either for their sake or his own. 
 Nothing is more vain than the labours of the 
 posture-masters of society, whose contortions of 
 condescension completely embarrass those who 
 
260 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 may be supposed to want their encouragement. 
 It is awkwardness of mind which co.uses a 
 warped manner ; and no twisting can ever set 
 either straight. 
 
 Agnes had seen high society from her child- 
 hood up. But in the tone of that semi-chi- 
 valrous age there was a rudeness that revolted 
 her ; why, she scarcely knew, for it was an 
 instinct of refinement that raised her above the 
 level of her country's manners. Chivalry was 
 then on the wane. Religious strife had roused 
 a deeper tone in the mind of Europe,, and par- 
 ticularly throughout Germany. War was now r 
 waged on more solemn inspirations than those 
 of gallantry; and champions of "the faith"" 
 scorned the suavity of their predecessors. 
 Churchmen and statesmen, on the other hand, 
 were stern in principle and rigid in manners. 
 Agnes's domestic circle formed no exception 
 to the prevalent tone. The ardent elegance 
 of Ghebhard Truchses was, therefore, some- 
 thing new to her ; and as her memory hastily 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 261 
 
 recalled the most distinguished courtiers of 
 Saxony, and the many strangers of note who 
 had appeared there at intervals, she mentally 
 gave the palm to the accomplished personage 
 with whom fate had now thus thrown her into 
 contact. 
 
 Agnes de Man sf eld t possessed a certain pecu- 
 liarity of taste, more common with young 
 women than may be obvious to those shallow 
 slanderers, who ascribe to some vitiated or 
 sordid motive whatever may appear an aberra- 
 tion from the beaten track of female common- 
 place. She had ever preferred the society of 
 men of middle-age to that of the youthful 
 danglers of the elector's court. She had ob- 
 served in those latter pretension overpowering 
 desert, and selfishness stifling decorum, in a 
 degree not to be met with in those who had 
 seen more of the world, and made it a study 
 instead of a sport. With greater information 
 and less levity, she found that the latter had 
 more skill in concealing their faults; and she, 
 
262 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 who had formed no attachment of the heart, 
 knew not as yet the delight of finding excuses 
 for the errors of those one loves. 
 
 Such was the fact with regard to Agnes. 
 She had never received any serious impression 
 from her various suitors. Her affections were 
 wholly disengaged. Several circumstances, one 
 of a very peculiar character, had led her to 
 consider herself out of the possible reach of any 
 attachment that might lead to marriage. And 
 any other never came within the scope of her 
 imagining. Her intercourse with the other sex 
 had, therefore, been at all times free from the 
 restraints which embarrass young women who 
 look to a wedded establishment in life. She 
 was neither afraid of herself nor of the men she 
 so unreservedly listened to ; nor what is still 
 more terrible to a sensitive and delicate mind 
 of the voice of scandal misinterpreting her con- 
 duct. 
 
 This absence of embarrassment is the great 
 charm of women, when not degenerating into 
 
A(iNES DE MANSFELDT. 263 
 
 frivolity. The loveliest fail to captivate when 
 evidently acting or studying a part. And, with 
 such a person as Truchses, Agnes's manner was 
 so utterly unrestrained that her various attrac- 
 tions had most ample play. His rank was no 
 cause of reserve to her, who had been ever used 
 to hold herself on a level with princes ; and his 
 profession never obtruded itself, but in those 
 passing reflections which made her think it a 
 pity, that one so calculated for every lay bless- 
 ing should be as much debarred as she consi- 
 dered herself to be from the greatest of all. 
 But this thought never came reflected, as it 
 were, from any image of her own situation. 
 If her destiny was, even in this early stage, 
 blended, either in fancy or reality, with that of 
 Ghebhard Truchses, she was at any rate uncon- 
 scious of it. 
 
 During this memorable evening, Jerome 
 Scotus played but the minor part of an ob- 
 server. He made himself in no way prominent, 
 except by assiduous efforts to leave the prin- 
 
264 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 cipal personages in the scene as much and as 
 uninterruptedly as possible together. He took 
 care to amuse and occupy the whole family of 
 Kriechlingen, father, daughters, and nephew. 
 His various arts to this effect were closely at- 
 tended to by Count Nuenar, who watched all 
 that was going on, in his usually keen and un- 
 impassioned way. The persons mentioned com- 
 posed the whole company. T ne baroness was, 
 as usual, confined to her private apartment, 
 where old Spangenberg kept her company, par- 
 took of her frugal repast, and duly read her to 
 sleep, before he retired to his early couch. The 
 Duchess of Saxe-Coburg did not appear at 
 either board for supper. Under the excuse of 
 indisposition for she had in truth recovered 
 from the sudden attack of the previous day 
 she wholly absented herself, and kept strictly 
 to her own chamber. 
 
 It may be supposed that Agnes's curiosity 
 had been greatly excited with respect to Scotus. 
 But it must be remembered that her friend's 
 
AGNES DE M4NSFELDT. 265 
 
 confidence had only gone the length of a vague 
 and general accusal of him. Agnes was wholly 
 ignorant of his nefarious conduct respecting the 
 jewels ; and she could not help making some 
 allowance in his favour (on the score of Duchess 
 Anne's enthusiastic, and consequently exagge- 
 rative, turn of mind) when she saw his footing 
 with the elector, and heard such testimonials 
 as were bestowed by the baron, and more par- 
 ticularly by young Leckenstein, on his prodi- 
 gious knowledge and various acquirements. 
 His bearing towards herself during the whole 
 evening was such as to weaken in a great mea- 
 sure her previous prejudice against him. No- 
 thing could be more decorous and respectful, 
 and at the same time less fawning or obstrusive. 
 The impression was altogether in his favour. 
 The high consideration in which he was evi- 
 dently held by the elector was, in spite of her, 
 almost enough to outweigh all that she had 
 heard. But, in fact, she scarcely observed or 
 thought of him at all after the first hour. He 
 
 VOL. I. N 
 
266 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 seemed but as a shadow, depending on that 
 brilliant substance of talent and accomplish- 
 ments after which he moved. Little did Agnes 
 know of the exulting joy with which he marked 
 the progress of events. Scotus saw clearly that 
 his game was now in his own hands. 
 
 We abstain from entering into a detail of the 
 conversation of that evening. Important as it was, 
 as the opening of a long period of vicissitudes 
 in the career of two gifted individuals, it never- 
 theless failed to bring out any of those salient 
 emotions of the heart, those gushing springs of 
 sentiment which leap at times through the sur- 
 face of social intercourse, like the live waters 
 bounding from a mountain's breast. The whole 
 of that evening was like a glow of sunshine, 
 the atoms of which might not be separated from 
 the bright and genial whole. The beings thus 
 brought together were like enchanted creatures, 
 walking in fairy-land, through bloom and fra- 
 grance, moved by some soft impulse, scarcely 
 felt and not to be defined. Yet in neither did 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 267 
 
 it produce that languid inanity which sinks to 
 sleep in enjoyment's lap. It awoke in both a 
 feeling of mature delight, which Agnes had not 
 even imagined, and which Truchses had only 
 dreamed of, as some far-distant and apochryphal 
 paradise, the ways of which he was not destined 
 to explore. 
 
 A whole month passed on. How many 
 readers will applaud our abstaining from an 
 attempt to trace the minute progress of the pas- 
 sion, the germs of which bad been so early de- 
 veloped ! We have faintly sketched the dawn 
 of the bright day. But the many-shifting hues 
 that light love's heaven when the sun of passion 
 rushes up, defy the boldest pencil and baffle the 
 keenest gaze. It is enough to state that the 
 impassioned elector was deep, deep in love. 
 Once more ! but with sensations wholly dif- 
 ferent from those of any previous attachment. 
 So different that this new modification of his 
 ruling passion appeared to him one totally dis- 
 tinct. It must be confessed that in his fre- 
 
 
268 AGNE9 DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 quent amours he had never had other than 
 sensual designs. The monstrous institutions 
 of the church to which he belonged having, in 
 its unequal war against nature, forced the 
 priesthood into libertinism, it chose to slur 
 over the offence rather than obviate the tempt- 
 ation. Truchses felt that love was a necessity 
 of his heart. From its legitimate raptures he 
 was, as a priest, debarred. His station as a 
 prince, gave unbounded scope to its illicit in- 
 dulgence. Woman had been to him therefore 
 a pursuit but never a prey. He was too 
 proud to have recourse to any vulgar influence 
 of power ; too generous to feel concession in 
 any case a triumph. He was at once the most 
 impassioned in sueing and most humble in suc- 
 cess. If he was driven out of the path of 
 virtue, he never at least trod that of dishonour ; 
 and he threw a delicacy into intrigue which 
 made it more dangerous than open vice. 
 
 Agnes de Mansfeldt produced an effect on 
 him which he had never before known. None 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 269 
 
 of the elements of what he had previously be- 
 lieved to be love seemed mixed with his new feel- 
 ings. He had not to combat any violent desires. 
 He had no war to wage against dishonouring 
 thoughts. Not one rose up in reference to her. 
 He was as though transplanted to an atmo- 
 sphere pure, calm, warm, and bright, free from 
 extremes and accidental agitation, where an 
 eternal sunshine lighted an undying spring, 
 and serenity was buoyant rather than volup- 
 tuous. The days flew rapidly, but not too 
 fast. It is only when we have some object 
 to gain, or some phantom to pursue, that time 
 appears unseasonably rapid. But Truchses" 1 
 existence now was as an undefined dream. 
 He asked for nothing but to be with Agnes. 
 When with her he thought of nought besides. 
 When absent from her he felt as joined to her 
 by some subtle link of sympathy. He could 
 not analyze it. Who could ? Yet who has 
 not felt the chain as light as gossamer, yet 
 stronger than iron fetters ? 
 
270 AGNES DE MANSFKLDT. 
 
 And so, Ghebhard Truchses was now really 
 in love and for the first time, at seven-and- 
 thirty years of age ! This may appear a start- 
 ling assertion after all we have confessed for 
 him. But the glowing fancy of boyhood, com- 
 monly called first love, is by no means of neces- 
 sity it. Many such flickering lights usurp the 
 title that belongs only to that steady flame which 
 may be awakened long after they have run their 
 meteor course. Those impetuous fancies of 
 early youth are easily distinguished from it. 
 For it is energetic without violence, passionate 
 without coarseness, tender without mawkishness, 
 and confident without audacity. And can he 
 who has felt such a passion, and known the 
 ecstacy of its being returned, ever forget one 
 circumstance of his bliss? No, no ! The chill- 
 ing influences of time and absence may congeal 
 all other feelings. But they preserve, while 
 they strengthen, the one passion shrined in his 
 heart like the condensed essence unfrozen in 
 the centre of a * flask, though surrounded 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 271 
 
 by ice formed of the wine's less ardent ele- 
 ments. 
 
 During this first month of Ghebhard Truchses' 
 regeneration, all custom of his former life was 
 in complete abeyance, all notions of business 
 paralyzed, all ambition, jealousy, and vain glory 
 dead. The affairs of the congress were totally 
 unheeded. His own concerns unthought of. 
 The intrigues of the former were left to his 
 rivals ; the cares of the latter to his friends. 
 Nuenar, Kriechlingen, and some others laboured 
 hard to uphold him in the estimation of the 
 citizens and the chapter. But he had no one to 
 plead his cause against those envious coadjutors, 
 named by the emperor to negotiate with him in 
 the congress, or to stand his friend against the 
 torrent of plausible complaint consequent on his 
 neglect of the high duties entrusted to his 
 charge. He made one or two efforts to rouse 
 into a watchfulness of the trust he knew himself 
 to be forsaking. But the chicaneries of diplo- 
 macy threw him back in disgust; and after 
 
272 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 auhile he gave up his official responsibilities, 
 even in thought. Every day saw him early at 
 Kriechlingen House. Every night brought 
 him late to his palace. While at the former, it 
 seemed to him as though an angel beamed on 
 him, attended but not rivalled by her three 
 seraph friends. When at home he had always 
 a domestic devil, feeding with forbidden fruit, 
 and whispering unceasing flatteries into his too 
 * ready ear. Scotus never allowed him any respite 
 from the glosing wiles by which he smoothed 
 his path to ruin. To ruin ? was it not the 
 Italian's interest to keep him powerful and 
 great ? Patience, good reader. 
 
 Of Agnes, her feelings, and her occupations, 
 during this month of exquisite monotony we 
 have little to record. The chapter of her life 
 had opened at a new page, and fate was about 
 to write in it in characters acutely legible. 
 But she was a passive agent in her own destiny. 
 She received the elector's visits not ostensibly 
 paid to her she walked with him in the garden, 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 273 
 
 she conversed with him in the saloon ; and she 
 sang to him, while he gazed and listened as 
 though sight and hearing formed but one sense ; 
 she watched him while he read, as though her 
 eyes took in the author's meaning more through 
 the eloquent expressions of the reader's features 
 than through the inspiring words which caused 
 their play. And thus the time ran on ; the 
 Duchess of Saxe-Coburg and the two sisters 
 playing subordinate parts in the oft-repeated 
 scene, and the former agitated by a host of emo- 
 tion, growing and shifting from day to day, to 
 a crisis of intensity which, with its causes, will 
 be explained in the proper place. 
 
 x3 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 MAY was now ripening to maturity, and 
 lending its influence to the growth of all bright 
 things and all good feelings. The sensation, 
 which wehave just striven to describe came clearly 
 within this latter category, and sudden circum- 
 stances soon completed what the regular march 
 of Time would have been long in bringing to 
 pass. 
 
 The fine weather and the verdant charms of 
 the open country irresistibly invited abroad 
 those whose sympathy with nature's beauties 
 was increased by the isolation which might be 
 thought to have checked it. For several weeks 
 the female inhabitants of Kriechlingen House 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 275 
 
 y 
 
 had scarcely left the precincts of its gardens. 
 Duchess Anne was restrained to those limits, 
 and even to their infrequent enjoyment, by the 
 mysterious slavery on the tenure of which her 
 existence seemed to hang. Agnes had had no 
 wish to pass them, and her influence on her 
 young hostesses was such as to lead them to 
 yield up to her inclinations for retirement even 
 those tastes which urged so many into the 
 scenes of public entertainment which abounded 
 during the continuance of the congress. But 
 the sisters had other causes, of strictly personal 
 concern, for this temporary seclusion from the 
 busy world. Fredolinda, with too sensitive 
 acuteness, had quickly observed the fascination 
 which the Duchess of Saxe-Coburg involun- 
 tarily began to exercise over her cousin Ulrick. 
 Jealousy soon springs up, a weed by the side of 
 love, in the warm heart that is joined with a 
 weak mind; and when once that fiend creeps 
 into paradise the fruit of knowledge turns to 
 deadly poison. Poor Freda found the truth of 
 
7 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 this, in the rapid pang which struck on her so 
 lately happy heart ; and her indolent enthu- 
 siasm, thus checked, soon turned to brooding 
 discontent. She made no complaint sought 
 no consolation kept her anxiety to herself 
 and sighed and wept in silence. 
 
 Emma, late so unfixed and laughter-loving, 
 had also shown a change of manner, if not quite 
 of character. An air of importance was taking 
 place of her levity, and rising above that 
 childish nothingness which she was used to 
 affect and seem proud of. Home and its noise- 
 less occupations seemed all at once to bound 
 her desires, as though she had forgotten all the 
 balls and concerts and assemblies, on the an- 
 ticipation of which her fancy had so long fed. 
 And what caused this marvellous change for 
 better for worse in this young person? not 
 love nor jealousy, certainly, but an awakened 
 sense of self-consequence from what arising ? 
 From the marked and unceasing attentions of 
 Scotus, who was to Emma the most extraordi- 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 nary, and of course in her notion, the most in- 
 teresting person she had ever met. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to explain the motives 
 which fixed this arch villain's designs on this 
 pretty and innocent girl. To keep her out of 
 the way of interfering with the elector's atten- 
 tions to Agnes, was his early inducement for 
 amusing her by tricks of legerdemain and light 
 arts of conversation ; and her evident pleasure 
 in his skill led him on to deeper projects, which 
 grew readily with slight encouragement. In 
 all his visits with the elector, he devoted him- 
 self to her; and her gratified vanity met his 
 attentions at least half way. 
 
 One feature in the social arrangements of 
 Kriechlingen House was the absence of Duchess 
 Anne from the circle, whenever Jerome Scotus 
 was of it. Whether this happened by accident 
 or intention was known but to Agnes. The 
 sisters grew gradually too busy with their own 
 thoughts to lavish much attention on the re- 
 served conduct of their high-born guest, who 
 
278 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 was left, as much as she wished, alone with her 
 private attendants. 
 
 But at length a day arrived, breaking this 
 monotonous round of seclusion, fixed on by 
 Ghebhard Truchses himself for a party which 
 was meant to be merely one of pleasure, but 
 which was destined to bring into play some of 
 the deeper and most delicate springs of passion. 
 The electoral palace of Bruhl, the favourite 
 residence of its princely occupant, was the scene 
 of the excursion ; and arrangements were made 
 under his directions, to combine all that was 
 elegant and attractive consistent with the strict 
 privacy of the plan. The persons included 
 were the elector, Nuenar, young Lee ken stein, 
 Scotus, and the four female friends for 
 Duchess Anne announced, with an assenting 
 smile, which few would have believed decep- 
 tive, that she was happy to make one. To 
 Walram, the elector's confidential valet, was 
 confided the care of the preparations previously 
 ordered. The party were to set out imme- 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 279 
 
 diately after sunrise, in two carriages ; one to 
 contain the elector, the duchess, Agnes and 
 Scotus, the other the two sisters, with Count 
 Nuenar and Ulrick. Not a single officer of 
 the elector's household, those usually indispen- 
 sable appurtenances of his state, was permitted 
 to intrude, and barely domestics enough at- 
 tended to watch after the wants of the party. 
 
 It is needless to describe the different grada- 
 tions of feeling, from delight to despondency, 
 with which this excursion was looked forward 
 to by the majority of the eight individuals just 
 named ; or to point out the exceptions to such, 
 in those who considered the thing in a cold and 
 calculating aspect. But of all the party, there 
 was certainly not one who felt so thorough 
 a sense of enjoyment as our heroine. The sen- 
 sations in which she revelled were probably 
 the happiest she had ever known ; and because 
 they had no direct object, no palpable design. 
 Anxiety, with all its demon train, is sure to 
 accompany the mind that looks even to the 
 
280 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 consummation of its happiest conceptions. But 
 Agnes had no fixed purpose in view, only one 
 general impulse of enjoyment pervading her 
 mind and body both, and giving to each a 
 buoyant elasticity, the very heaven of innocent 
 sensation. 
 
 Ere the sun rose high enough over the 
 summits of the seven mountains to look down 
 on his own image in the quivering undulations 
 of the Rhine, Agnes had viewed her beam- 
 ing face and quickly-attired person in her 
 mirror's imperfect reflection. She involuntarily 
 smiled at her own beauty, and her breast 
 bounded in an instinctive sentiment of happi- 
 ness. But she could not enjoy herself alone. 
 Self-admiration and self- content always call for 
 sympathy. It is only the self-despising and 
 dissatisfied that are unsocial. Agnes wanted to 
 show herself to, and to talk with, some one who 
 both admired and loved her ; and knowing that 
 the day-break orisons of her venerable tutor 
 were by this time far on their road to Heaven, 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 281 
 
 she resolved to surprise him by a visit that 
 might gently lead his thoughts earthwards 
 again. She crossed the corridor with tip-toe 
 buoyancy, and tapped at old Spangenberg's 
 door. The murmurs of his voice caught her 
 ear. 
 
 " Ah, still at prayer !" thought she. " So 
 much the better. His blessing will be blended 
 with thanksgiving, and my vanity be tempered 
 by his devotion."' 
 
 She opened the door softly ; but had only 
 half entered when she started back, on seeing 
 the figure of a man sitting beside the reverend 
 pastor, his body bent, in evidence of close 
 attention to the words of the speaker. Had 
 this new comer been a stranger, Agnes would, 
 of course, have retired. Had the person whom 
 she saw and instantly recognised, though his 
 face was turned from her, so burst upon her 
 unexpectedly a short month before, she had 
 rapturously rushed into his arms. Noiv she 
 stood as though spell-bound ; and the current 
 
282 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 of her veins shrank freezing back to its throb- 
 bing reservoir. 
 
 The person whose appearance had wrought 
 this change on our heroine turned round and 
 perceived her as she stood. 
 
 " Ha! Agnes!" cried he, rising from his seat 
 and advancing towards her. But as if struck 
 by her confused and almost terrified looks, he 
 stopped short, and added, in a tone of severe 
 reproach, "What! listening /" 
 
 This latter word was really the only one that 
 Agnes heard. Its sound brought her to her- 
 self. 
 
 "Listening!' 1 repeated she, and the blood 
 rushed from her heart again, suffusing her 
 cheeks and brow. " If your sudden appearance 
 surprised me Ernest, I am shocked by your 
 hasty words. I thought you knew me better!" 
 " I thought so too, my sister but a 
 month produces mighty changes at times. 
 Pardon me, however; it was a hasty word. 
 Thou wilt forgive it surely ? Thou wert 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 283 
 
 never of an ungenerous rnood, and least of 
 all to me." 
 
 All this was true ; and Agnes felt her resent- 
 ment expire under the breath of the apology. 
 But that self- formed tact which springs from 
 the necessity of deceit, taught her to feign an 
 anger even greater than she had for a moment 
 felt. She made no reply to her brother's ap- 
 peal ; and as he advanced, with open arms and 
 penitent look, she shrank back and turned her 
 head away. 
 
 " Why, how is this ?" resumed Ernest 
 " This is not nature's doing, Agnes. Either 
 thou didst listen at the door, and thus looked 
 guilt at my reproach, or some powerful feeling 
 worked within thee, to show such unquiet signs 
 at my unlocked for, my unwelcome visit." 
 
 Agnes was now really piqued by these taunts. 
 But hypocrisy was still at work ! Fearing to 
 over-act her part, she suppressed what she had 
 erewhile assumed ; and in the short space of a 
 few minutes she performed a more varied series 
 
284 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 of deception than she had ever been guilty of 
 in the course of as many years. At every step 
 she felt humiliated and confused. She had yet 
 to learn the pleasure and the pride of conceal- 
 ment, as regards emotions whose chief value is 
 secrecy, and to which betrayal is little less than 
 death. 
 
 " Ernest," said she with somewhat recovered 
 serenity, " this is a strange meeting for those 
 who parted as we did, who have lived so long 
 in love and confidence together, who have 
 pledged such vows as bind us to each other. 
 How is this ? Whence come you ? and why 
 are you here abruptly, to take me, as it would 
 seem, by surprise, to load me with reproach, 
 and to provoke retort is this the way in 
 which we ought to meet ?" 
 
 " No, Agnes, no ! It is not so the Count of 
 Mansfeldt should find his sister. But ask me 
 not why it is so. Turn your inquiries inwards. 
 Your own heart must answer. Mine is this 
 moment choked with grief and anger I tell 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 285 
 
 you so at once. The vow you have invoked is 
 broken in thought if not in deed. Our solemn 
 pact is violated there is no faith in you !" 
 
 These words were uttered with violent em- 
 phasis. The speaker showed a terrible reality 
 of agitation. His pale cheeks and lips com- 
 pressed conveyed an expression of sentiment as 
 sorrowful as language could do. Agnes trem- 
 bled inwardly ; but no visible weakness betrayed 
 her. 
 
 " Is it not so ?" continued the brother, 
 " speak ! are not my reproaches just ? Have I 
 not good right to feel and to act thus ?" 
 
 " No," replied Agnes, firmly. 
 
 " No !" echoed he, " canst thou, then, be so 
 quickly sunk in shame as to deny it ? By 
 Heavens, then, I will seek elsewhere for the 
 confession, even in the throne-room of thy 
 princely paramour ! This instant too- the ho- 
 nour of our race impels me." 
 
 " The madness of your brain !" exclaimed 
 Agnes, laying her hand firmly on his arm, as 
 
286 AGXES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 he attempted to rush past her. The tone in 
 which she spoke affected him more than the 
 gesture. He stopped and looked full in her 
 face. He read there a whole volume of indig- 
 nant energy and virtuous agitation. 
 
 " Yes," continued she, " madness alone could 
 prompt this outrage, to me, yourself, and our 
 whole line, undishonoured until now by these 
 foul words. No, Ernest, you shall not pass 
 me. Here you must stay till you amply un- 
 fold the meaning of your bold and boisterous 
 slander. And well it is that our venerable 
 friend is present at this scene, which no one 
 could credit on my unwitnessed word. Good 
 pastor, will you explain this abrupt arrival, 
 this cruel treatment, and if you know it the 
 cause of such wild change in him who is my 
 brother born, and the sworn guardian of the 
 honour he now dares to impugn.*' 
 
 " By Heavens, I marvel at thee, Agnes!" 
 cried the brother, gazing at her, his arms 
 folded and his attitude fixed, as she rushed to- 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 287 
 
 wards old Spangenberg, who had remained silent 
 in his large chair during the rapid scene. " I 
 marvel at thy beauty and thy boldness both. 
 Some magic has been done with thee. Nought 
 else could, in the short space since our last 
 parting, have added to thy charms or changed 
 thy temper so. Can this be the meek, the 
 placid canoness of Gerrisheim ? The open- 
 minded, honest daughter of De Mansfeldt? 
 Ah, Agnes, increased development of beauty 
 is dearly paid for by a change of character and 
 a sacrifice of principle !" 
 
 A flush spread broadly on Agnes's face. It 
 was mixed up of vanity and shame. Pride or 
 resentment did not this time mingle in the dye. 
 The pleasant flattery and the deep reproach fell 
 on a conscious mind and told. She burst into 
 tears, not wholly bitter. She saw love in her 
 brother's look, and heard sorrow in his voice, 
 and their combined appeal was irresistible. 
 
 " Ah, dearest Agnes, my more than sister," 
 exclaimed he, passing his arm round her and 
 
288 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 pressing her towards him, " how must I inter- 
 pret this emotion ? Is it remorse is it a return 
 to old, genuine feeling is it affection so long 
 perverted and frozen in thy heart now unpri- 
 soned in a gushing thaw ? Speak to me, Agnes, 
 and set me at rest, for thou hast caused me 
 much misery." 
 
 " Supposing that I had, Ernest, you seem 
 disposed to pay it back," said she, " but I 
 have caused you none. You wrong me. Some 
 fantasy possesses your brain. Why will you 
 not explain this cruel mystery ?" 
 
 " Well, then, I will explain, if still thou art 
 resolved to seem ignorant. I at least will be 
 frank. Whatever betides, it shall not be my 
 fault. 1 ' 
 
 With these words, Ernest de Mansfeldt led 
 his sister forward and closed the door. He 
 then addressed Spangenberg. 
 
 " Kind pastor, your love for our house and 
 for us will pardon my begging the use of this 
 chamber for a brief space, will it not ?" 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 289 
 
 " Yea, yea, my children. I will retire to 
 my sleeping-room and leave ye to yourselves. 
 He who has for half a century shared the castle 
 of a noble prince, may well yield his anti-room 
 for half an hour to his patron's children." 
 
 " Now we are alone, Agnes, left to ourselves, 
 but are we ourselves again ? Has my presence 
 broken the spell which drove me from thy 
 heart and made thee other than thou wert ? 
 Are the feelings of this letter still thy feelings ? 
 Oh, what a mighty influence must have been 
 at work to have ever made them thine ! Look 
 here is not concealment now worse than cri- 
 minal, is it not vain ?" 
 
 Agnes's eyes glanced rapidly over the letter 
 which her brother held towards her as he spoke. 
 It was half open, and she thought she saw her 
 own hand-writing. She read a few words. 
 She knew they were not her's. She blushed 
 and trembled. Her brother's eye was fixed 
 sternly on her. She met his stare by a quick 
 and steady gaze. 
 
 VOL. i. o 
 
290 AUNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 " Ernest, you are imposed on. This is a 
 piece of jugglery. I never wrote that letter." 
 
 " Canst thou deny thine own hand-writing ?" 
 
 " Dare you accuse me of such words as 
 those? For shame, for shame, my brother! 
 Where was your Mansfeldt blood your manly 
 sense your honest confidence ? Perish the vile 
 scrawl, and with it your more vile suspicions !" 
 
 This appeal was irresistible. The brother, 
 convinced, confounded, repentant and indig- 
 nant, examined word by word the false docu- 
 ment with her whose sentiments it blasphemed. 
 It was a letter to the address of the elector- 
 archbishop, breathing confessions of unseemly 
 boldness, and couched in language too unequi- 
 vocal for doubt. The hand-writing was so like 
 that of Agnes that no difference could have 
 been told between the real and the false. The 
 cover was endorsed with the words " From my 
 beloved one," and the initials G. T. were affixed. 
 Agnes had seen the elector's writing aye and 
 received some of it, in light notes of courtesy 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 291 
 
 and complimentary verses, for Ghebhard wove 
 couplets and paid compliments at times. 
 
 " So, then, I have wronged thee, Agnes ! 
 But the atonement will cost dear to this mitred 
 profligate, who has forged thy name and would 
 blast thy reputation. This hour shall see thee 
 revenged." 
 
 " Hold, Ernest, hold ! you are wrong in all 
 ways. His highness the elector could not do 
 any act of baseness." 
 
 " What ! wouldst thou " 
 
 " Nay, nay, my brother, cease this impetuous 
 obstinacy. I know the forger of the letter and 
 of the elector's signature. His motive I cannot 
 divine." 
 
 66 Tell me his name instantly/' 
 
 " No, Ernest. This unwonted violence is of 
 bad augur for the calm consideration of a case 
 like this. His highness's name involved, his 
 honour trifled with, we must proceed with the 
 utmost delicacy." 
 
 " And thy name, Agnes, thine honour ! art 
 
292 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 they as nought ? art them so absorbed by con- 
 siderations for this libertine prelate that thou 
 thinkest of him alone? Good sister, we quit 
 Cologne together to-day." 
 
 To-day P 
 
 " Aye, Agnes. That start, that emphasis, 
 that palor and now that flush all add force to 
 my resolve and speed to its execution. Prepare 
 for our journey home." 
 
 Such had been the tone of authority at all 
 times usual to Count Ernest de Mansfeldt in 
 his conduct to his sister. She had always sub- 
 mitted to it as a thing of course. She had 
 never questioned the dictation; but yielded, 
 from habit and want of a motive for resistance, 
 a common case even with strong minds domi- 
 neered over by weak ones. But now a great 
 change had taken place in the character of 
 Agnes. Why, she knew not yet, for she was not 
 conscious of the influence which love was work- 
 ing in her. But no dictation save that of the 
 mighty passion now for the first time deve- 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 293 
 
 loped had evermore a chance of ruling her. 
 She had been shocked by her brother's abrupt 
 order for departure, but by no means shaken. 
 
 " I cannot possibly leave Cologne to-day, 
 except for an excursion, already fixed on, to the 
 elector's country palace at Bruhl,"" said Agnes, 
 in a tone of most unusual decision. 
 
 " Indeed !" exclaimed her brother. " Are 
 then my suggestions (he would have said orders] 
 of no weight with my sister ?" 
 
 " Not when balanced against the deference 
 owing to a sovereign prince, and the courtesy 
 to my dear friend the Duchess of Coburg and 
 my kind relatives and hostesses." 
 
 f( Then / shall make one of this party ; or, 
 without me, you, Agnes, shall not be of it," 
 
 " Of it I shall be most assuredly, kind 
 brother ; and I know that the arrangements 
 render it impossible that you can find a place." 
 
 Ernest looked and felt astounded, as these 
 words so calm and so decided fell upon his ear. 
 He had tact enough to observe that his empire 
 o 2 
 
294 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 was overthrown ; but, quite taken by surprise, 
 he wanted courage for a vigorous attempt to 
 replace it. His instant and only resource was 
 a cunning subserviency that instinct which 
 holds with common men the place of bold saga- 
 city in great ones, and for which success too 
 often gains the meed that the latter alone 
 should procure. 
 
 " Well, Agnes," said he, "I must not con- 
 test with thee this point of etiquette, or force 
 my company on thee or thy friends. But, un- 
 less thou art prepared to throw off my guar- 
 dianship altogether, thy visit to this dangerous 
 place must come to a speedy close, for the sake 
 of our common honour and our mutual happi- 
 ness. And now reveal to me the name of him 
 who has dared to counterfeit thy writing and 
 compromise thy reputation." 
 
 " I have no doubt of Count Scotus being the 
 base impostor." 
 
 " And who may he be this count ?" 
 
 " Who I know not, but he is the elector's 
 
AGNES I)E MANSFELDT. 295 
 
 guest a false and dangerous one I had good 
 reason to believe, even before this treachery. 
 You shall know more of him, my brother, in due 
 season But now I must bid thee good morn- 
 ing, for the time of our departure is at hand. 
 When I return at night we shall have much to 
 tell, of what has passed during our month's 
 separation." 
 
 " How often hast thou thought of me the 
 while, Agnes ?" 
 
 A blush of conscious change answered the 
 implied reproach. But Agnes was at once an 
 adept in her new character. She hurried over 
 the difficulty thus thrown in her path. A smile, 
 an embrace, a light, ambiguous phrase or two 
 formed all the reply to Ernest's serious ques- 
 tion. In a moment more he found himself 
 alone ; and Agnes soon joined her expectant 
 friends, and with them was quickly borne from 
 Kriechlingen House in the elector's carriage, 
 which was, even before the time appointed, in 
 waiting at the rendezvous. 
 
296 AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 
 
 As Ernest heard his sister's light leave-taking, 
 marked her as she quitted the chamber with 
 unembarrassed air, and then saw her leave the 
 house and enter the carriage with all the ease 
 of independence, he felt confounded. She, his 
 long subservient creature beloved 'twas true, 
 but still at all times held in thraldom so yield- 
 ing heretofore, now all at once beyond control, 
 how could the change have happened ? What 
 portion of the mystery was to be unraveled, and 
 by whom ? On what foundation was the forged 
 epistle built ? How far had this intercourse 
 with the elector gone ? These and a dozen 
 more bewildering thoughts rushed across the 
 anxious brother. To resolve his doubts was no 
 easy matter. He had no acquaintance in Co- 
 logne but the old and almost doating pastor ; 
 and from the vague answers already given by 
 Spangenberg to his rapid questionings he had 
 little hope of any decisive information in that 
 quarter. To it however he was obliged again 
 to turn. And he quicklv summoned the old 
 
AGNES DE MANSFELDT. 297 
 
 man to another conference, in which a few 
 gleams of additional light were thrown on the 
 domestic doings of the family in general, but 
 which afforded no clue to the particular details 
 of Agnes's new connexion, the absorbing sub- 
 ject of her brother's doubts and fears. 
 
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