“As you say,” cried Wolff resolutely. “In spite of the peace of the country, I will be at your service at any time. As you see, I went out unarmed, and it would not be well done to cross swords here.”
“Certainly not,” Heinz assented. “But many days and nights will follow this moonlight one, and that you may have little difficulty in finding me whenever you desire, know that my name is Heinrich—or to more intimate friends, among whom you might easily be numbered if we don’t deprive each other of the pleasure of meeting again under the sun—Heinz Schorlin.”
“Schorlin?” asked Wolff in surprise. “Then you are the knight who, when a beardless boy, cut down on the Marchfield the Bohemian whose lance had slain the Emperor’s charger, the Swiss who aided him to mount the steed of Ramsweg of Thurgau—your uncle, if I am not mistaken—and then took the wild ride to bring up the tall Capeller, with his troops, who so gloriously decided the day.”
“And,” laughed Heinz, “who was finally borne off the field as dead before the fulfilment of his darling wish to redden Swiss steel with royal Bohemian blood. This closed the chronicle, Herr—what shall I call you?”
“Wolff Eysvogel, of Nuremberg,” replied the other.
“Aha! A son of the rich merchant where the Duke of Gulich found quarters?” cried the Swiss, lifting his cap bordered with fine miniver. “May confusion seize me! If I were not my father’s son, I wouldn’t mind changing places with you. It must make the neck uncommonly stiff, methinks, to have a knightly escutcheon on door and breast, and yet be able to fling florins and zecchins broadcast without offending the devil by an empty purse. If you don’t happen to know how such a thing looks, I can show you.”
“Yet rumour says,” observed Wolff, “that the Emperor is gracious to you, and knows how to fill it again.”
“If one doesn’t go too far,” replied Heinz, “and my royal master, who lacks spending money himself only too often, doesn’t keep his word that it was done for the last time. I heard that yesterday morning, and thought that the golden blessing which preceded it would last the dear saints only knew how long. But ere the cock had crowed even once this morning the last florin had vanished. Dice, Herr Wolff Eysvogel—dice!”
“Then I would keep my hands off them,” said the other meaningly.
“If the Old Nick or some one else did not always guide them back! Did you, a rich man’s son, never try what the dice would do for you?”
“Yes, Sir Knight. It was at Venice, where I was pursuing my studies, and tried my luck at gambling on many a merry evening with other sons of mercantile families from Nuremberg, Augsburg, and Cologne.”
“And your feathers were generously plucked?”
“By no means. I usually left a winner. But after they fleeced a dear friend from Ulm, and he robbed his master, I dropped dice.”
“And you did so as easily as if it were a short fast after an abundant meal?”
“It was little more difficult,” Wolff asserted. “My father would have gladly seen me outdo my countrymen, and sent me more money than I needed. Why should I deprive honest fellows who had less?”
“That’s just the difficulty,” cried his companion eagerly. “It was easy for you to renounce games of chance because your winnings only added more to the rest, and you did not wish to pluck poorer partners. But I! A poor devil like me cannot maintain armour-bearer, servants, and steeds out of what the dear little mother at home in her faithful care can spare from crops and interest. How could we succeed in making a fair appearance at court and in the tournament if it were not for the dice? And then, when I lose, I again become but the poor knight the saints made me; when I win, on the contrary, I am the great and wealthy lord I would have been born had the Lord permitted me to choose my own cradle. Besides, those who lose through me are mainly dukes, counts, and gentlemen with rich fiefs and fat bourgs, whom losing doubtless benefits, as bleeding relieves a sick man. What suits the soldier does not befit the merchant. We live wholly amid risks and wagers. Every battle, every skirmish is a game whose stake is life. Whoever reflects long is sure to lose. If I could only describe, Herr Eysvogel, what it is to dash headlong upon the foe!”
“I could imagine that vividly enough,” Wolff eagerly interposed. “I, too, have broken many a lance in the lists and shed blood enough.”
“What a dunce I am!” cried Heinz in amazement, pressing his hand upon his brow. “That’s why your face was so familiar! By my saint! I am no knight if I did not see you then, before the battle waxed hot. It was close beside your Burgrave Frederick, who held aloft the imperial banner.”
“Probably,” replied Wolff in a tone of assent. “He sometimes entrusted the standard to me, when it grew too heavy for his powerful arm, because I was the tallest and the strongest of our Nuremberg band. But, unluckily, I could not render this service long. A scimitar gashed my head. The larger part of the little scar is hidden under my hair.”
“The little scar!” repeated Heinz gaily. “It was wide enough, at any rate, for the greatest soul to slip through it. A scar on the head from a wound received four years ago, and yet distinctly visible in the moonlight!”
“It should serve as a warning,” replied Wolff, glancing anxiously up the street. “If the patrol, or any nocturnal reveller should catch sight of us, it would be ill for the fair fame of the Ortlieb sisters, for everybody knows that only one—Els’s betrothed lover—has a right to await a greeting here at so late an hour. So follow me into the shadow of the linden, I entreat you; for yonder—surely you see it too—a figure is gliding towards us.”
Heinz Schorlin’s laugh rang out like a bell as he whispered to the Nuremberg patrician: “That figure is familiar to me, and neither we nor our ladies need fear any evil from it. Excuse me moment, and I’ll wager twenty gold florins against yonder linden leaf that, ere the moonlight has left the curbstone, I can tell you my lady’s colour.”
As he spoke he hastened towards the figure, now, standing motionless within the shadow of the door post beside the lofty entrance.
Wolff Eysvogel remained alone, gazing thoughtfully upon the ground.
CHAPTER VIII.
The silent wanderer above had expected to behold a scene very unlike an interview between two men. The latter required neither her purest, fullest light, nor the shadow of a blossoming linden.
Now Luna saw the young Nuremberg merchant gaze after the Swiss with an expression of such deep anxiety and pain upon his manly features that she felt the utmost pity for him. He did not look upward as usual to the window of his beautiful Els, but either fixed his eyes upon the spot where his new acquaintance was conversing with another person, or bent them anxiously upon the ground.
As Wolff thought of Heinz Schorlin, it seemed as if Fate had thrown him into the way of the Swiss that he might feel with twofold anguish the thorns besetting his own life path. The young knight was proffered the rose without the thorn. What cares had he? The present threw into his lap its fairest blessings, and when he looked into the future he beheld only the cheering buds of hope.
Yet this favourite of fortune had expressed a desire to change places with him. The thought that many others, too, would be glad to step into his shoes tortured Wolff’s honest heart as though he himself were to blame for the delusion of these short-sighted folk.
Apart from his strength and health, his well-formed body, his noble birth, his faith in the love of his betrothed bride—at this hour he forgot how much these things were—he found nothing in his lot which seemed worth desiring.
He might not even rejoice in his stainless honesty with the same perfect confidence as in his betrothal.
Yes,