The Princess Helen passed the night in the chapel, vowing tons of wax-candles to all the patron saints of the House of Cleves, if they would raise her up a defender.
But how did the noble girl's heart sink--how were her notions of the purity of man shaken within her gentle bosom, by the dread intelligence which reached her the next morning, after the defiance of the Rowski! At roll-call it was discovered that he on whom she principally relied--he whom her fond heart had singled out as her champion, had proved faithless! Otto, the degenerate Otto, had fled! His comrade, Wolfgang, had gone with him. A rope was found dangling from the casement of their chamber, and they must have swum the moat and passed over to the enemy in the darkness of the previous night. "A pretty lad was this fair-spoken archer of thine!" said the Prince her father to her; "and a pretty kettle of fish hast thou cooked for the fondest of fathers." She retired weeping to her apartment. Never before had that young heart felt so wretched.
That morning, at nine o'clock, as they were going to breakfast, the Rowski's trumpets sounded. Clad in complete armor, and mounted on his enormous piebald charger, he came out of his pavilion, and rode slowly up and down in front of the castle. He was ready there to meet a champion.
Three times each day did the odious trumpet sound the same notes of defiance. Thrice daily did the steel-clad Rowski come forth challenging the combat. The first day passed, and there was no answer to his summons. The second day came and went, but no champion had risen to defend. The taunt of his shrill clarion remained without answer; and the sun went down upon the wretchedest father and daughter in all the land of Christendom.
The trumpets sounded an hour after sunrise, an hour after noon, and an hour before sunset. The third day came, but with it brought no hope. The first and second summons met no response. At five o'clock the old Prince called his daughter and blessed her. "I go to meet this Rowski," said he. "It may be we shall meet no more, my Helen--my child--the innocent cause of all this grief. If I shall fall to-night the Rowski's victim, 'twill be that life is nothing without honor." And so saying, he put into her hands a dagger, and bade her sheathe it in her own breast so soon as the terrible champion had carried the castle by storm.
This Helen most faithfully promised to do; and her aged father retired to his armory, and donned his ancient war-worn corselet. It had borne the shock of a thousand lances ere this, but it was now so tight as almost to choke the knightly wearer.
The last trumpet sounded--tantara! tantara!--its shrill call rang over the wide plains, and the wide plains gave back no answer. Again!--but when its notes died away, there was only a mournful, an awful silence. "Farewell, my child," said the Prince, bulkily lifting himself into his battle-saddle. "Remember the dagger. Hark! the trumpet sounds for the third time. Open, warders! Sound, trumpeters! and good St. Bendigo guard the right."
But Puffendorff, the trumpeter, had not leisure to lift the trumpet to his lips: when, hark! from without there came another note of another clarion!--a distant note at first, then swelling fuller. Presently, in brilliant variations, the full rich notes of the "Huntsman's Chorus" came clearly over the breeze; and a thousand voices of the crowd gazing over the gate exclaimed, "A champion! a champion!"
And, indeed, a champion HAD come. Issuing from the forest came a knight and squire: the knight gracefully cantering an elegant cream-colored Arabian of prodigious power--the squire mounted on an unpretending gray cob; which, nevertheless, was an animal of considerable strength and sinew. It was the squire who blew the trumpet, through the bars of his helmet; the knight's visor was completely down. A small prince's coronet of gold, from which rose three pink ostrich-feathers, marked the warrior's rank: his blank shield bore no cognizance. As gracefully poising his lance he rode into the green space where the Rowski's tents were pitched, the hearts of all present beat with anxiety, and the poor Prince of Cleves, especially, had considerable doubts about his new champion. "So slim a figure as that can never compete with Donnerblitz," said he, moodily, to his daughter; "but whoever he be, the fellow puts a good face on it, and rides like a man. See, he has touched the Rowski's shield with the point of his lance! By St. Bendigo, a perilous venture!"
The unknown knight had indeed defied the Rowski to the death, as the Prince of Cleves remarked from the battlement where he and his daughter stood to witness the combat; and so, having defied his enemy, the Incognito galloped round under the castle wall, bowing elegantly to the lovely Princess there, and then took his ground and waited for the foe. His armor blazed in the sunshine as he sat there, motionless, on his cream-colored steed. He looked like one of those fairy knights one has read of--one of those celestial champions who decided so many victories before the invention of gun powder.
The Rowski's horse was speedily brought to the door of his pavilion; and that redoubted warrior, blazing in a suit of magnificent brass armor, clattered into his saddle. Long waves of blood-red feathers bristled over his helmet, which was farther ornamented by two huge horns of the aurochs. His lance was painted white and red, and he whirled the prodigious beam in the air and caught it with savage glee. He laughed when he saw the slim form of his antagonist; and his soul rejoiced to meet the coming battle. He dug his spurs into the enormous horse he rode: the enormous horse snorted, and squealed, too, with fierce pleasure. He jerked and curveted him with a brutal playfulness, and after a few minutes' turning and wheeling, during which everybody had leisure to admire the perfection of his equitation, he cantered round to a point exactly opposite his enemy, and pulled up his impatient charger.
The old Prince on the battlement was so eager for the combat, that he seemed quite to forget the danger which menaced himself, should his slim champion be discomfited by the tremendous Knight of Donnerblitz. "Go it!" said he, flinging his truncheon into the ditch; and at the word, the two warriors rushed with whirling rapidity at each other.
And now ensued a combat so terrible, that a weak female hand, like that of her who pens this tale of chivalry, can never hope to do justice to the terrific theme. You have seen two engines on the Great Western line rush past each other with a pealing scream? So rapidly did the two warriors gallop towards one another; the feathers of either streamed yards behind their backs as they converged. Their shock as they met was as that of two cannon-balls; the mighty horses trembled and reeled with the concussion; the lance aimed at the Rowski's helmet bore off the coronet, the horns, the helmet itself, and hurled them to an incredible distance: a piece of the Rowski's left ear was carried off on the point of the nameless warrior's weapon. How had he fared? His adversary's weapon had glanced harmless along the blank surface of his polished buckler; and the victory so far was with him.
The expression of the Rowski's face, as, bareheaded, he glared on his enemy with fierce bloodshot eyeballs, was one worthy of a demon. The imprecatory expressions which he made use of can never be copied by a feminine pen.
His opponent magnanimously declined to take advantage of the opportunity thus offered him of finishing the combat by splitting his opponent's skull with his curtal-axe, and, riding back to his starting-place, bent his lance's point to the ground, in token that he would wait until the Count of Eulenschreckenstein was helmeted afresh.
"Blessed Bendigo!" cried the Prince, "thou