Under these impressions Maximilian suffered her to remain. It seemed cruel to disturb her with the truth. He was sensible that continued anxiety, and dreadful or afflicting spectacles, had with her, as with most persons of her sex in Germany at that time, unless protected by singular insensibility, somewhat impaired the firm tone of her mind. He was determined, therefore, to consult her comfort, by disguising or palliating their true situation. But, for his own part, he could not hide from his conviction the extremity of their danger; nor could he, when recurring to the precious interests at stake upon the issue of that and the next day's trials, face with any firmness the afflicting results to which they tended, under the known barbarity and ruffian character of their unprincipled enemy.
CHAPTER V
The chateau of Falkenberg, which the travellers reached with the decline of light, had the usual dependences of offices and gardens, which may be supposed essential to a prince's hunting establishment in that period. It stood at a distance of eighteen miles from Klosterheim, and presented the sole oasis of culture and artificial beauty throughout the vast extent of those wild tracts of sylvan ground.
The great central pile of the building was dismantled of furniture; but the travellers carried with them, as was usual in the heat of war, all the means of fencing against the cold, and giving even a luxurious equipment to their dormitories. In so large a party, the deficiencies of one were compensated by the redundant contributions of another. And so long as they were not under the old Roman interdict, excluding them from seeking fire and water of those on whom their day's journey had thrown them, their own travelling stores enabled them to accommodate themselves to all other privations. On this occasion, however, they found more than they had expected; for there was at Falkenberg a store of all the game in season, constantly kept up for the use of the Landgrave's household, and the more favored monasteries at Klosterheim. The small establishment of keepers, foresters, and other servants, who occupied the chateau, had received no orders to refuse the hospitality usually practised in the Landgrave's name; or thought proper to dissemble them in their present circumstances of inability to resist. And having from necessity permitted so much, they were led by a sense of their master's honor, or their own sympathy with the condition of so many women and children, to do more. Rations of game were distributed liberally to all the messes; wine was not refused by the old kellermeister, who rightly considered that some thanks, and smiles of courteous acknowledgment, might be a better payment than the hard knocks with which military paymasters were sometimes apt to settle their accounts. And, upon the whole, it was agreed that no such evening of comfort, and even luxurious enjoyment, had been spent since their departure from Vienna.
One wing of the chateau was magnificently furnished. This, which of itself was tolerably extensive, had been resigned to the use of Paulina, Maximilian, and others of the military gentlemen, whose manners and deportment seemed to entitle them to superior attentions. Here, amongst many marks of refinement and intellectual culture, there was a library and a gallery of portraits. In the library some of the officers had detected sufficient evidences of the Swedish alliances clandestinely maintained by the Landgrave; numbers of rare books, bearing the arms of different imperial cities, which, in the several campaigns of Gustavus, had been appropriated as they fell in his hands, by way of fair reprisals for the robbery of the whole Palatine library at Heidelberg, had been since transferred (as it thus appeared) to the Landgrave, by purchase or as presents; and on either footing argued a correspondence with the emperor's enemies, which hitherto he had strenuously disavowed. The picture-gallery, it was very probable, had been collected in the same manner. It contained little else than portraits, but these were truly admirable and interesting, being all recent works from the pencil of Vandyke, and composing a series of heads and features the most remarkable for station in the one sex, or for beauty in the other, which that age presented. Amongst them were nearly all the imperial leaders of distinction, and many of the Swedish. Maximilian and his brother officers took the liveliest pleasure in perambulating this gallery with Paulina, and reviewing with her these fine historical memorials. Out of their joint recollections, or the facts of their personal experience, they were able to supply any defective links in that commentary which her own knowledge of the imperial court would have enabled her in so many instances to furnish upon this martial register of the age.
The wars of the Netherlands had transplanted to Germany that stock upon which the camps of the Thirty Years' War were originally raised. Accordingly, a smaller gallery, at right angles with the great one, presented a series of portraits from the old Spanish leaders and Walloon partisans. From Egmont and Horn, the Duke of Alva and Parma, down to Spinola, the last of that distinguished school of soldiers, no man of eminence was omitted. Even the worthless and insolent Earl of Leicester, with his gallant nephew,—that ultimus Romanorum in the rolls of chivalry,—were not excluded, though it was pretty evident that a Catholic zeal had presided in forming the collection. For, together with the Prince of Orange, and Henri Quatre, were to be seen their vile assassins—portrayed with a lavish ostentation of ornament, and enshrined in a frame so gorgeous as raised them in some degree to the rank of consecrated martyrs.
From these past generations of eminent persons, who retained only a traditional or legendary importance in the eyes of most who were now reviewing them, all turned back with delight to the active spirits of their own day, many of them yet living, and as warm with life and heroic aspirations as their inimitable portraits had represented them. Here was Tilly, the "little corporal" now recently stretched in a soldier's grave, with his wily and inflexible features. Over against him was his great enemy, who had first taught him the hard lesson of retreating, Gustavus Adolphus, with his colossal bust, and "atlantean shoulders, fit to bear the weight of mightiest monarchies." He also had perished, and too probably by the double crime of assassination and private treason; but the public glory of his short career was proclaimed in the ungenerous exultations of Catholic Rome from Vienna to Madrid, and the individual heroism in the lamentations of soldiers under every banner which now floated in Europe. Beyond him ran the long line of imperial generals,—from Wallenstein, the magnificent and the imaginative, with Hamlet's infirmity of purpose, De Mercy, etc., down to the heroes of partisan warfare, Holk, the Butlers, and the noble Papenheim, or nobler Piccolomini. Below them were ranged Gustavus Horn, Banier, the Prince of Saxe-Weimar, the Rhinegrave, and many other Protestant commanders, whose names and military merits were familiar to Paulina, though she now beheld their features for the first time. Maximilian was here the best interpreter that she could possibly have met with. For he had not only seen the greater part of them on the field of battle, but, as a favorite and confidential officer of the emperor's, had personally been concerned in diplomatic transactions with the most distinguished amongst them.
Midnight insensibly surprised them whilst pursuing the many interesting historical remembrances which the portraits called up. Most of the company, upon this warning of the advanced hour, began to drop off; some to rest, and some upon the summons of the military duty which awaited them in their turn. In this way, Maximilian and Paulina were gradually left alone, and now at length found a time which had not before offered for communicating freely all that pressed upon their hearts. Maximilian, on his part, going back to the period of their last sudden separation, explained his own sudden disappearance from Vienna. At a moment's warning, he had been sent off with sealed orders from the emperor, to be first opened in Klosterheim: the mission upon which he had been despatched was of consequence to the imperial interests, and through his majesty's favor would eventually prove so to his own. Thus it was that he had been peremptorily cut off from all opportunity of communicating to herself the purpose and direction of his journey previously to his departure from Vienna;