CHAPTER XV.

THE ARCHDUCHESS AND WALLENSTEIN.

The persons who witnessed the unexpected arrival of Wallenstein asked themselves why he had come; Nigel because to his reflective mind the ostensible reason, anxiety to impart the news of Gustavus to the Emperor, was insufficient; the Archduchess Stephanie because she desired with all the intensity of woman that another cause might be at work.

Nigel in the camp with Tilly had heard accounts, more or less garbled, of the famous meeting of the Electors with the Emperor at Ratisbon a year before. Reichstag, the Diet, or Day of the State, was the name of such meetings, and that had been a momentous one for Wallenstein, for the world. All the Electors were there save only the Elector Palatine, the Winter-King, who was a wanderer over the face of Europe. And without the conclave were Friar Joseph, "His grey Eminence," the familiar of Cardinal Richelieu, and Cardinal Caraffa, the Pope's nuncio. France and Italy alike on this occasion were pulling at the Electoral puppet-strings, and making them hold up hands for the dismissal of Wallenstein, the "insolent Wallenstein." And when a captain-general, for four years in the field, has set all the Electors of Germany, Catholic and Protestant, against him, it may be deduced that he has shown himself careless of giving offence, and has forgotten the respect due to princes. The Emperor had wished to retain him. He knew that he had been well served, and in so far as his extreme religious views would allow him, he was a just and certainly courageous prince. But he had been forced to defer to the Electors who had chosen him to be Emperor.

Nigel agreed that a man as great as Wallenstein would never have ridden from Eger to Vienna to bring this news to the Emperor, notwithstanding that, if Wallenstein had ever shown anything approaching to personal affection and deference to man, it had been to the Emperor. He would have sent a swift messenger, or allowed the Emperor to learn the news in his own way, as he would have learned it in a day or two at the most. And Nigel was right in his conjecture.

The following afternoon the Archduchess Stephanie, with two ladies in demure attendance, took the air in a light carriage, which, for its elegance, was still an object of admiration in the streets of Vienna. It was said to have been a present to the Emperor from his brother monarch, Louis Treize. And was not the Queen of Louis Treize Anne of Austria?

The carriage stopped at Otto Fugger's in the Rudolf Strasse. Otto Fugger was the richest banker in Vienna, and was the brother of Jacob Fugger of Antwerp, and cousin of Wilhelm Fugger of Amsterdam, and of Antonio Fugger in Venice. The Archduchess descended and entered. All the aristocracy of Europe dealt with the Fuggers.

And when the Archduchess was ushered with great politeness by Otto Fugger himself into one of his several libraries on an upper floor, and the banker had bowed low and left her, she found one she expected standing by a casement which looked out into a beautiful garden.

In the habit which he wore, of sombre hue and formal cut, rich withal but not conspicuous, he might have passed for one of those very prosperous merchants that were making their presence felt in the large cities, if the alert bearing of the man, and the air of domination, had not proclaimed one of a superior rank and a military caste.

The man and the woman looked at one another. In the man's look was questioning. It asked, "How can this woman serve my purpose? What makes her wish to serve it?"

In the woman's was rejoicing at some purpose partly achieved, and something of timidity.

The looks were instantaneous; the pause before the speech but momentary.

"At last, Albrecht von Waldstein!" She spoke in low soft tones, and held out both hands, as if he should take them both into captivity.

"I am here because you have willed it, Stephanie!"

It was a personal touch, not an outcome of his immense pride. Here they met on another plane than that of the life of courts. And Stephanie was so young. He took her long slender fingers in his large masterful brown hands and kissed them both, in his heart rather amused.

Let us not be mistaken. Wallenstein was not led to Vienna by the God of Love. Nor did he imagine that he was. He came, and knew that he had come, because of the perfect circle of Pietro Bramante, who was rather the priest of Apollo, because of the secant ellipse, whose right focus was the centre of his circle.

He came because of the image of Stephanie, which he had seen, or thought he had seen, at Eger, even as Saul saw the wraith of Samuel, or thought he saw it, in the caves at Endor.

But Pietro Bramante had prophesied, or so Wallenstein had read the prophecy, that his way to the complete circle was by making the heart of woman the pivot and centre of his intelligence. It was not easy for Wallenstein to formulate the idea in words; but if there were a meaning in the mystery it must be that through the love of Stephanie he would arrive at the culminating point of success; and Stephanie was the daughter of the Emperor.

Therefore he looked curiously at her, wondering at the miracle, as any man who experiences it must wonder at the miracle of the love of woman.

Wallenstein had never been a habitant of the palaces of kings. As little as need was had he come to Vienna on sparse visits to the Emperor. He had seen and spoken to the Archduchess Stephanie, when, six years before, he had laid his offer before the Emperor. He remembered her as a tall, slim maiden with large, dark, wistful, following eyes, a child of moods. He remembered her when two years more had passed, what a glorious triumphant pair of years, in which he had gathered his army, marched against Mansfeld, overcome him at Dessau on the Elbe, then harried him through Silesia into Hungary, forced his ally, Bethlen Gabor, to throw down his arms, and driven Mansfeld over the border into Bosnia to die of a broken fame. Before going into winter quarters he had paid a fleeting visit to Vienna to receive his first meed of commendation from the Emperor. The Archduchess Stephanie had ripened to the first promise of a completer womanhood, gained in erectness, in rounder curves, and over her face and bearing had stolen virginal radiance and conscious modesty, not unmingled with the Habsburg pride of race. Wallenstein remembered how she too had greeted him in her own way with two sprigs of laurel and a little speech which died on her lips.

And now she had reached the perfect May of womanhood. "What then? At last, Albrecht von Waldstein!"

"I am here because you have willed it, Stephanie!"

"Say rather because the fates have willed it!" she said in a tone in which awe and triumph were mingled, and her eyes looked out as through a mist. Wallenstein felt a thrill go through him, something unknown to his cold intelligence, something which roused latent fire in him, and infused into him a spirit more akin in rarity to hers.

He still held her slender fingers in his brown sinewy hands as if he would suck in more of that ethereal fluid fire.

"You would have come of your own accord because of your interest in Albrecht von Waldstein?" There was approval, condescension, petition for her assent in his tones.

"Something of you grew into my girlhood, Albrecht! I cannot tell how. When you, a simple gentleman of Bohemia, came to my father and in his troubled hour offered to raise up an army to defend him against his enemies, I had a feeling of exultation. Something told me that here was greatness, a new Hercules come to earth."

Wallenstein's eyes, those cold eyes of his, glowed at her saying. Prodigious egotist that he was! He accepted her words as those of an oracle. He drank in the significance of her words, but of their relation to the feelings of the priestess that uttered them he divined less even than he valued them. To him her words confirmed him in his own estimate of himself. But he was too little a connoisseur of precious nonsubstantial things to show surprise or wonder at the priceless worth of that young princess's worship.

"Six years ago," he said, "you acclaimed my star on the horizon of your heart."

"Yes, Albrecht! And then when you came again, do you remember my poor sprigs of laurel which I was almost too shy to give you?"

"I have them yet, Stephanie!" It was true. He had them. They were an emblem of his advancing fortunes bestowed by the daughter of the Emperor. Of the heart that had prompted the gift, the shy, proud, full, maidenly heart, he had known nothing.

"And as your star waxed, so I rejoiced and said, 'Albrecht von Waldstein is become equal to the greatest princes of the earth.' You and your armies filled all my mind. My pride in you became a great part of me."

Her eyes were cast down so that he saw little but the soft black fringes of the lids; her rich voice was modulated to all but a whisper. And as the man gazed at her, drinking in her words and watching the heave and fall of her bosom, an unusual gentleness crept over him and he began to see the wonder of her.

"Gracious and beautiful princess!" he said. "To think that as I climbed I knew nothing of the spirit that spoke secretly to mine and urged me forward and upward." There was something of self-reproach in his tone as for something beautiful in a glimpse of the valley that a climber misses and learns of in after days.

She went on with her confession--

"I prayed for your success. I do not know what I would have had you do, until the day of Ratisbon, when all the dogs in Germany bayed at you and the Emperor sent an embassy--it was that in fact--to beg you to lay down the power, the stupendous power, you wielded. Then, oh the direful days they were! I hoped, I feared. I dreaded and longed to hear that, like Cæsar of old, you were crossing the Rubicon and were marching on the capital."

Wallenstein heaved a mighty sigh.

"You felt, Stephanie, what it cost me!"

The Archduchess looked up into his eyes.

"It is true. My heart had awakened. The woman mourned and would not be comforted. She would have had you king! King, Albrecht! And you put everything aside to resume a private station. And some said that therein you did the greatest act of your life to make the way easy for the Emperor and bring peace into the land."

"And you, Stephanie?"

"Not I!" She raised her head proudly to its full eminence, that queenly brow with its twin lakes of unfathomable light. "Not I! What to me was the peace of Germany, or of the Emperor? I would have had you march on to victory or death. Fortune must be taken at the flood. She seldom comes twice for the same barque."

"You have the spirit of your eagles, Stephanie! Trust me! I weighed the chances and put off the hour because the hour was destined to return again. It was tempting fortune; but it was better to resign my baton gracefully at the Emperor's command than to lose all in one desperate, unconsidered rebellion."

"Rebellion is for subjects! But remember, Albrecht von Waldstein, that if you would mate with eagles you must prove yourself their peer. Fly high and boldly!"

Wallenstein experienced another thrill. This time a fresh thought leapt into being. "Mate with eagles? What could she mean?" An unwonted light broke over the cold, lined face.

"You cannot mean that in the hour of victory you will be my hostage against the Emperor, Stephanie?"

"The day you win Bohemia for your crown I share it with you!"

"Bohemia! And you, Stephanie?" Even now he could scarcely believe his ears. He saw quite clearly the immense advantage it would be to him to wed Stephanie: how it would tie the hands of the Emperor and prevent the otherwise inevitable reprisals.

"And Holy Church? I am wedded man!"

"The Church can give dispensations where she wishes. She shall wish, even if you have to march on Rome!"

"And you pledge yourself to help me counter their Jesuit plans?"

"I do, Albrecht. See, I kiss the cross! I vow it solemnly! And as earnest, let me tell you they would have me marry Maximilian!"

"God in heaven!" exclaimed Wallenstein. "That shall not be, if there be a nunnery to keep you safe on this side of the Alps."

Wallenstein made no movement of passion. He looked at her and saw that she was desirable and lovely beyond the common allurement of women, beyond the beauty of all princesses he had seen. But he saw, too, that there was something lofty in her soul, a virgin chastity, that forbade all trivial thought of dalliance. It was a solemn compact.

He knelt at her feet. She laid one soft hand upon his head and said--

"Be my knight, Albrecht, without fear. And when all the fields are won, I await you."

He took her other hand and kissed it. The vibration of a strong emotion passed through him. He was left alone.