The service ended, it was part of the pledge of amity that the reconciled enemies should break their fast together, and a collation of white bread and wine was provided for the purpose. The Emperor tried to promote free and friendly talk between the two adversaries, but not with great success; for Dankwart, though honest and sincere, seemed extremely dull. He appeared to have few ideas beyond his Prussian commandery and its routine discipline, and to be lost in a castle where all was at his sole will and disposal, and he caught eagerly at all proposals made to him as if they were new lights. As, for instance, that some impartial arbitrator should be demanded from the Swabian League to define the boundary; and that next Rogation- tide the two knights should ride or climb it in company, while meantime the serfs should be strictly charged not to trespass, and any transgressor should be immediately escorted to his own lord.
"But," quoth Sir Dankwart, in a most serious tone, "I am told that a she-bear wons in a den on yonder crag, between the pass you call the Gemsbock's and the Schlangenwald valley. They told me the right in it had never been decided, and I have not been up myself. To say truth, I have lived so long in the sand plains as to have lost my mountain legs, and I hesitated to see if a hunter could mount thither for fear of fresh offence; but, if she bide there till Rogation-tide, it will be ill for the lambs."
"Is that all?" cried Maximilian. "Then will I, a neutral, kill your bear for you, gentlemen, so that neither need transgress this new crag of debate. I'll go down and look at your bear spears, friend Ebbo, and be ready so soon as Kasimir has done with his bridal."
"That crag!" cried Ebbo. "Little good will it do either of us. Sire, it is a mere wall of sloping rock, slippery as ice, and with only a stone or matting of ivy here and there to serve as foothold."
"Where bear can go, man can go," replied the Kaisar.
"Oh, yes! We have been there, craving your pardon, Herr Graf," said Ebbo, "after a dead chamois that rolled into a cleft, but it is the worst crag on all the hill, and the frost will make it slippery. Sire, if you do venture it, I conjure you to take Koppel, and climb by the rocks from the left, not the right, which looks easiest. The yellow rock, with a face like a man's, is the safer; but ach, it is fearful for one who knows not the rocks."
"If I know not the rocks, all true German rocks know me," smiled Maximilian, to whom the danger seemed to be such a stimulus that he began to propose the bear-hunt immediately, as an interlude while waiting for the bride.
However, at that moment, half-a-dozen horsemen were seen coming up from the ford, by the nearer path, and a forerunner arrived with the tidings that the Baron of Adlerstein Wildschloss was close behind with the little Baroness Thekla.
Half the moonlight night had Sir Kasimir and his escort ridden; and, after a brief sleep at the nearest inn outside Ulm, he had entered in early morning, demanded admittance at the convent, made short work with the Abbess Ludmilla's arguments, claimed his daughter, and placing her on a cushion before him on his saddle, had borne her away, telling her of freedom, of the kind lady, and the young knight who had dazzled her childish fancy.
Christina went down to receive her. There was no time to lose, for the huntsman Kaisar was bent on the slaughter of his bear before dark, and, if he were to be witness of the wedding, it must be immediate. He was in a state of much impatience, which he beguiled by teasing his friend Wildschloss by reminding him how often he himself had been betrothed, and had managed to slip his neck out of the noose. "And, if my Margot be not soon back on my hands, I shall give the French credit," he said, tossing his bear-spear in the air, and catching it again. "Why, this bride is as long of busking her as if she were a beauty of seventeen! I must be off to my Lady Bearess."
Thus nothing could be done to prepare the little maiden but to divest her of her mufflings, and comb out her flaxen hair, crowning it with a wreath which Christina had already woven from the myrtle of her own girlhood, scarcely waiting to answer the bewildered queries and entreaties save by caresses and admonitions to her to be very good.
Poor little thing! She was tired, frightened, and confused; and, when she had been brought upstairs, she answered the half smiling, half shy greeting of her bridegroom with a shudder of alarm, and the exclamation, "Where is the beautiful young knight? That's a lady going to take the veil lying under the pall."
"You look rather like a little nun yourself," said Ebbo, for she wore a little conventual dress, "but we must take each other for such as we are;" and, as she hid her face and clung to his mother, he added in a more cheerful, coaxing tone, "You once said you would be my wife."
"Ah, but then there were two of you, and you were all shining bright."
Before she could be answered, the impatient Emperor returned, and brought with him the abbot, who proceeded to find the place in his book, and to ask the bridegroom for the rings. Ebbo looked at Sir Kasimir, who owned that he should have brought them from Ulm, but that he had forgotten.
"Jewels are not plenty with us," said Ebbo, with a glow of amusement and confusion dawning on his cheek, such as reassured the little maid that she beheld one of the two beautiful young knights. "Must we borrow?"
Christina looked at the ring she had first seen lying on her own Eberhard's palm, and felt as if to let it be used would sever the renewed hope she scarcely yet durst entertain; and at the same moment Maximilian glanced at his own fingers, and muttered, "None but this! Unlucky!" For it was the very diamond which Mary of Burgundy had sent to assure him of her faith, and summon him to her aid after her father's death. Sir Kasimir had not retained the pledge of his own ill-omened wedlock; but, in the midst of the dilemma, the Emperor, producing his dagger, began to detach some of the massive gold links of the chain that supported his hunting-horn. "There," said he, "the little elf of a bride can get her finger into this lesser one and you--verily this largest will fit, and the goldsmith can beat it out when needed. So on with you in St. Hubert's name, Father Abbot!"
Slender-boned and thin as was Ebbo's hand, it was a very tight fit, but the purpose was served. The service commenced; and fortunately, thanks to Thekla's conventual education, she was awed into silence and decorum by the sound of Latin and the sight of an abbot. It was a strange marriage, if only in the contrast between the pale, expressive face and sad, dark eyes of the prostrate youth, and the frightened, bewildered little girl, standing upon a stool to reach up to him, with her blue eyes stretched with wonder, and her cheeks flushed and pouting with unshed tears, her rosy plump hand enclosed in the long white wasted one that was thus for ever united to it by the broken fragments of Kaisar Max's chain.
The rite over, two attestations of the marriage of Eberhard, Freiherr von Adlerstein, and Thekla, Freiherrinn von Adlerstein Wildschloss and Felsenbach, were drawn up and signed by the abbot, the Emperor, Count Dankwart, and the father and mother of the two contracting parties; one to be committed to the care of the abbot, the other to be preserved by the house of Adlerstein.
Then the Emperor, as the concluding grace of the ceremonial, bent to kiss the bride; but, tired, terrified, and cross, Thekla, as if quite relieved to have some object for her resentment, returned his attempt with a vehement buffet, struck with all the force of her small arm, crying out, "Go away with you! I know I've never married YOU!"
"The better for my eyes!" said the good-natured Emperor, laughing heartily. "My Lady Bearess is like to prove the more courteous bride! Fare thee well, Sir Bridegroom," he added, stooping over Ebbo, and kissing his brow; "Heaven give thee joy of this day's work, and of thy faithful little fury. I'll send her the bearskin as her meetest wedding-gift."