CHAPTER XIII.

A FATHER, A CONFESSOR, AND A DAUGHTER.

The Emperor Ferdinand and Father Lamormain were together in the Emperor's private apartments.

"She was always Stephanie the intractable!" said the Emperor, with something like a smile on his grave face. After all he had many memories of her that Father Lamormain could never have of any child.

"Yes!" said Father Lamormain. "But in this case your Imperial Majesty should permit itself to use its parental authority."

"Even to harshness?"

"Even to harshness!" said the priest in a gentle voice. "Your Majesty knows that the Elector Maximilian still claims that the Empire owes him thirteen millions of crowns for his aid in the war against the Elector Palatine, and that he wanted the Palatinate, and would have had it but for the opposition of Brandenburg and Saxony. Now if Brandenburg and Saxony join Gustavus, as they must, what can we say to Maximilian if he prefers his claim again?"

"He must have it, I suppose!" said the Emperor in a tone that suggested that he was rather tired.

"Then he will ask for Bohemia as the price for allowing his army to support Tilly against Gustavus."

"Bohemia is another affair!" said the Emperor more briskly.

"Now if her Highness the Archduchess would only consent to marry the Elector Maximilian, we should hear nothing more of the thirteen millions, or of the Palatinate, or of Bohemia," reflected Father Lamormain aloud.

"She is very young!" objected his Majesty.

"Not too young for mischief, sire."

"What new freak have you discovered, Father?"

"This!" said the Father, producing the letter he had had before him on the previous day. "It is a summary of the roll of Tilly's army, and it was found upon a messenger, who was unfortunately killed on his way to the north _before he could be questioned_."

"But what has this to do with the Archduchess Stephanie?"

"It is marvellously like her handwriting! It is in cipher, of course; but look for yourself, sire." The Emperor looked at it.

"It appears to be a woman's, and it is a most unclerkly scrawl. I should hesitate to attribute it to Stephanie! And, if it were hers, what possible object could she have in obtaining it, and how could she have obtained it?"

"It was in my hands, your Majesty, before the despatches arrived."

"But the seal on the despatches was intact. It was Count Tilly's seal. The Chancellor was satisfied?"

"Yes, sire!" The tone signified that Chancellors as a rule were easily satisfied.

"Come, Father, do you seriously suggest that the officer who brought it allowed the despatches to leave his hands?"

Father Lamormain had every cause to suppose so, but was unable for reasons of his own to state so.

"I merely infer from this cipher!"

"But it was not impossible that the roll of Tilly's army should be known to others, within a little!"

"Your Majesty's remark would be just if the messenger had been intercepted riding from Magdeburg. But from Eger, by which the officer passed? What then?"

"That would be to doubt the officer's fidelity. To begin with, he is a Scottish gentleman! He is of our faith! He is selected by Tilly, who has a good eye for a man."

"Then your Majesty does not wish the matter pursued in that direction." Father Lamormain was quite pleasant about it. He went on--

"I may say that I had a little talk with this young officer this morning in the gardens, and he appears to be a gentleman of good breeding, and of an ancient family, very well mannered, and wary withal. Your Majesty would be the better judge how far he is to be trusted if he were bidden to your reception after supper to-night. For the orders your Majesty will send to Tilly will be still more secret!" The Father seemed full of the most paternal feelings towards this young man, at the same time very desirous that the young man should not prove a prodigal son.

"As to the Archduchess Stephanie," said the Emperor, "I will speak to her on the subject of Maximilian. It is an ill time to consider marriages when there is so much at stake, but our faithful Elector can scarcely be bidden to wait _at his age_!" The Emperor had then a dry kind of humour. "You may send for her, Father, on my behalf!"

Father Lamormain pocketed his letter and retired. In a short time the Archduchess made her entry into her father's presence.

Her face wore the softness that is the outcome of an affectionate nature. The fine meshes of the veil of rank that fell between her and the rest of the world, obscuring the expression, were absent.

Ferdinand's eye swept over her tall gracious form as she approached, and as she bent her knee to kiss his hand. He approved, but it made no difference. He was not a prince to be swayed by womanly beauty. Some princes have spent their lives toying with women; some have made women their pastimes in the brief intervals of strenuous attention to war and to affairs; but Ferdinand was a prince of affairs in which women had no place. As a father, however, he was not wanting in affection.

"My Stephanie!" he said, when he had kissed her upon the cheek. "Politics are a very troublous thing, and all kinds of considerations come into play. The alliances in marriage between princes and princesses are dictated by the necessities of their States rather than by any inclination of their own."

The Emperor felt, because Stephanie, sitting on a low stool at his side, had her hands upon her father's, that the blood stirred very palpably, and he knew that she listened.

"The turn of events has brought your name into question. The Elector Maximilian has put forward a project of marriage. He asks for you."

A crimson flush overspread those pale clear cheeks. So much Ferdinand saw. She kept her gaze steadily away from him.

"What do you think of it, little one?"

She turned her head and looked up at her father, her eyes widely open.

"I think it monstrous! That old man! A man who has already lived a thousand lives to make his last mumbling meal of me who am just newly come into my womanhood! Monstrous! Unspeakably monstrous!"

"He is of a ripe age, certainly, is my cousin Maximilian. He is in fact fifty-eight, as I am. But he is still full of vigour, a leader of men, a great and renowned prince, and our most trusty ally. Once at least we had been in grave jeopardy but for his counsel and for his armies. Even now we are employing his men and generals in support of our Edicts."

"To slay peaceable burghers, burn their goods, throw down their houses, ravish their daughters! Say this rather!"

"My daughter!" said Ferdinand, and his voice became cold and haughty, "you forget! As a good son of the Church I am bound to extirpate that most pernicious root of heresy from all German lands. There can be no peace till this is done."

The Archduchess Stephanie had gauged her father's religious fanaticism and found it deep, deeper than any measuring-stick of hers. She did not sympathise with it. Like most women she was herself prone to the practices of religion, and in the conduct of life a pagan. She saw no benefit that could come out of the Edict of Restitution. To her mind, money, or goods, or lands were to pass out of the hands of very worthy industrious burghers to maintain lazy and often very dirty priests and monks. She thought it was barely possible, but still possible, for people to get to heaven somehow without them. The Emperor was quite satisfied that they could not. His intentions were sincere, and the Archduchess knew that it was useless to pursue the attack along this line.

"The fall of Magdeburg," she said, "might bring about some sort of alliance of all the Protestant powers. Brandenburg and Saxony at least must join Gustavus. Denmark, the United Provinces, may follow."

"The more reason have we to keep hold of such friends as we have by what entertainment we may."

"Have you so little faith in Maximilian that you should judge him capable of drawing off his men when he learns that I will not wed him?"

"I have always found Maximilian loyal to the Empire. But a friendship such as his should be requited."

"Then let him be requited with gold or with lands, but not with me. Let him draw off his men, his Pappenheim. Then send for the man who shall sweep Gustavus back to his ships, him for whom the Empire waits, him who alone can create armies at a word and lead them."

"Who _is_ this Achilles?" was the faintly ironical question of the Emperor.

"Who but Albrecht von Waldstein?" was the instant, almost triumphant, answer of the Archduchess. She had risen to her feet and faced him with it, voice and gesture and eyes aglow with a conviction that betrayed an intense energy of desire behind it. The Emperor gazed at her with his pale scrutinising eyes, in which was no enthusiasm.

"My dear Stephanie," he said in his half-wearied tone, "if Wallenstein were not a man of middle age, who has married a second wife, one might almost suspect that you were enamoured of him."

She held herself erect, looking at the Emperor, but her eyes were upon a vision far beyond. She said nothing, for the Emperor had not made an end. He had dealt her this thrust of scorn. Now he assailed her with reason.

"It is a year since, on the Elector's day at Regensburg, they clamoured one and all for Wallenstein's dismissal. They urged that he was become too powerful for a subject."

"Maximilian's jealousy!" she interposed.

"Maximilian was one amongst many! I judged the advice sound. I dismissed Wallenstein. My foes were beaten down. There was no need to maintain an army of seventy thousand men in the field to nourish the ambition of a general. It is enough, Stephanie. No good can come of princesses meddling in politics. Look to it that you entreat not our cousin Maximilian slightingly, or even with less than the graciousness that becomes a princess. I am too indulgent. The affair can wait till it be considered further. You would not be the first princess of the house of Habsburg to wed without love. Therefore make no grievance of it!"

He held out his hand, which the Archduchess bent over and kissed, and she left the Emperor once more alone.