CHAPTER XXXIV.

LUTHERAN AND JESUIT.

The officer of the guard at the palace was not clear as to what he was to do with his unintended catch. The fact that he was, or styled himself, a Lutheran pastor, was, in Vienna, in the eyes of such an officer, a criminal offence in itself. In addition, he had been caught upon the wall of the orchard close in the gardens of the palace.

Upon examination he proved to be reticent even to moroseness. His only explanation was that he had come to Vienna in search of a high-born lady, the Countess Ottilie von Thüringen. The officer of the guard had never heard of her, and till the morning had no one to consult. So Pastor Rad spent an uncomfortable night. His supper was meagre. The stone floor of the guard-room was hard, and the wind swept in under the massive door and up the capacious chimney, incidentally swirling round the Pastor's head and shoulders on its way. Half a dozen soldiers, who smelt very vilely, sat round the fire and played cards with great zest, and with oaths the most blood-curdling that Pastor Rad, who had heard many things spoken in his lifetime, had ever heard. He slept badly.

The next day Father Lamormain, who heard of everything, heard of this incident and sent for Pastor Rad.

It was the mark of Father Lamormain that he was uniformly courteous. He kept all his hatred under lock and key. And his hatred of Lutheranism was perhaps the profoundest passion of his life, next to the love he bore to his own order of the regular priests. If Father Lamormain could have gathered all the Lutheran ministry together, and compounded them into one man, and severed that man's head from his body, he would have acquiesced in that monstrous execution, without personal gratification, but with a sense that the most desirable of events had come to pass. But to address an individual Lutheran (minister and layman were alike to him) with a frown, with harsh speech, or even with mild contempt, was impossible to him.

Pastor Rad, unkempt as to his abundant yellow hair, muddy as to his raiment, presented an object for easy ridicule. Father Lamormain's secretary led him in with an air of apology. The Emperor's confessor requested him to be seated, and asked him if he had broken his fast. Pastor Rad, much taken aback by his reception at the hands of this renowned enemy of his faith, said No! Father Lamormain bade his secretary give him what he needed, and bring him back in an hour.

The secretary, understanding all his instructions implied, brought him back washed, combed, brushed, and recognisable as a Lutheran pastor as far as externals went.

Pastor Rad was greatly mollified by these attentions, and found grace enough to return thanks.

"And now," said Father Lamormain, "you will pardon me, Pastor Rad, if I ask you a few questions. You came to Vienna from Prague?"

"Yes!" said the pastor.

"At Prague, I understand, you found it necessary to speed some of the Catholic fugitives with exhortations?"

Pastor Rad admitted it. On reflection this seemed to be a gentle description of his sonorous revilings; but he wondered how much Father Lamormain knew and how he knew it. He also considered that it behoved him to be careful.

"May I ask you what brought you to Prague?"

"In search of one, a maiden, named Elspeth Reinheit, a member of my flock from Eisenach."

"How did she come thither?"

"I had learned that she set out for Prague in company of a certain Countess Ottilie von Thüringen."

"Yes?"

"I learned that the Countess had set out for Vienna, and followed."

"Truly a good shepherd!" said Father Lamormain pleasantly. "You left the ninety-and-nine at Eisenach to discover your one lost lamb in Vienna!"

"And this Countess?"

"No one knows her in Vienna!"

"So you went to look for her in the orchard close in the palace gardens?"

Pastor Rad hesitated. Then he said--

"I did not seek her there. But she was there!"

"Yes!" said Father Lamormain. "You saw her!"

"No, I heard her voice!"

"So you knew her voice?"

"Yes, I had met her in Magdeburg during the siege!"

"She is a Lutheran also?"

"She consorted with the Lutherans! I know nothing of her except that she has been at the Wartburg staying with the Landgrave's family."

Pastor Rad suddenly began to suspect that he was too confidential.

"She is evidently a lady of rank!" said the Jesuit. "She was alone in the orchard?"

"No! She was with a cavalier."

"Ah! You knew him also?"

"Yes! I do not know his name! I saw him first at Magdeburg. He was a fierce fighter. He is a foreigner. I saw him yesterday as he rode away from the palace, and he lodges in the Fremdengasse. He is an officer."

"You seemed to have followed him! Did you suspect him of stealing your lamb?"

"Yes!" said Pastor Rad with an indignation which was not fictitious.

"And instead you found him with this strange Countess! Can you describe her to me?"

"She is very tall. She has dark hair, dark eyes, red lips, a pale complexion, and bears herself proudly!"

"Ah! Such a one can hardly escape notice in Vienna!" said the Jesuit. "And what is your purpose with this maiden--this Elspeth Reinheit?"

"To take her back to her father, and if she be indeed yet a true maid, to marry her!"

"She would scarcely have suffered loss in company of a great lady?"

"I do not know anything of great ladies! But I have many reasons to think this foreign officer may have wronged her--even in Magdeburg."

"'Judge not, that ye be not judged,' Pastor Rad. I promise that, if she be in Vienna, she shall be handed over to you. See to it that you deal tenderly with your lamb in return for our gentle dealing with you."

"I was robbed of my money!" Pastor Rad complained.

"It shall be repaid to you twice over," said the Jesuit. "How much was it?"

The pastor told him, and the Jesuit noted it on his tablets.

"Now get to your lodgings and wait there a day. A servant shall go with you."

On the same day Nigel Charteris was summoned by the Emperor's Military Council, and bidden make his way through Bavaria to join his old commander Count Tilly. There and not in Austria or Bohemia it was thought that a period might be put to the King of Sweden's progress. Tilly had men enough in conjunction with the Elector Maximilian's, but lacked officers. The Council feared the Saxons less, who were at Prague, and so in a manner at their doors, than the foreigner Gustavus, who had so signally shown his mastery alike upon the Elbe and upon the Rhine.

Asking what forces he was to conduct, he was told that a mere escort would be sufficient. The road was open, and speed alone was necessary. Nigel was more flattered than if three regiments had been confided to him, for the Council made it appear that it was he, Nigel, and not regiments, that was wanted. He knew that at the moment there was no superfluity of troops in and around Vienna to defend it should the Saxons decide to move southward, but his experience of the behaviour of the Saxon troops at Breitenfeld had left him with a poor opinion of their courage, their initiative, and their leadership.

Father Lamormain saw him after he had received his orders. He made no reference to Pastor Rad, of whose nearness Nigel was unaware, nor to the orchard close, nor to Stephanie. That some prowler or other had been about the trysting-place Nigel was aware, and, on account of the Archduchess, he had refrained from encountering him. Having seen nothing himself, he imagined that his own and his mistress's persons had enjoyed a like invisibility. Unaccustomed to fear himself, he had not understood why Stephanie in her concluding embrace had trembled and clung to him with the mingled weakness, tenderness, and passionate strength of which woman is capable at supreme moments of danger. It had touched his heart. It had left him determined that nothing at the last should separate them but the hand of death itself. So he looked upon this expected summons to resume duty at the front with the confidence of youth, that nothing but a few short weeks lay between him and her he loved,--weeks perhaps in which he might compass more of that military glory he coveted, and so lessen the distance that yawned between them. What if he should find the opportunity to wrest from the pretendedly reluctant and chaffering Wallenstein the laurels of the Empire to lay at her feet?

So Nigel met Father Lamormain with no suspicion at the back of his mind, but rather with brave hopes and the supreme joy that a man feels who knows that he is beloved by her whom he conceives to be the star of womanhood.

Father Lamormain bade him exert himself to the utmost. He told him that the armies of Tilly and Maximilian constituted the final barrier that prevented the Swedish hosts, reinforced by Germans from every Protestant state, from rolling through Bavaria, resistless as the Danube in flood, and finally reaching Vienna. He made him feel, as the clumsy brief remarks and explanations of the Army Council had not, though they had borne some suggestion, that on his own personal devotion and intelligence depended the whole fortune of the Empire. The appeal was the more sure that it was in the first place an appeal to his simple loyalty as a mercenary soldier, and not to his nationality. In the second place, Father Lamormain appealed to his faith. He spoke in no uncertain way of the fate of those heretics who should fall, striving against the Emperor and Holy Church. He touched slightly on the indifference of the Holy Father, Urban the Eighth, to the calls of the Emperor for succour, and the apparent hostility of the fervently Catholic King of France and his Cardinal Minister. He deplored them, but did not gloss them over. He was evidently, so Nigel thought, working towards producing in Nigel a proper state of mind from which might spring the spiritual flower of a heroic death. It was the rule of the order. For the individual, sacrifice; for the cause of the order, everything that might enhance its progress.

It was as if the Jesuit strove to wean him from earthly aims, to instil into him something of the essence of his own self-lessness: and, for the brief while that the audience lasted, Nigel's soul and mind took some impress in its wax of youth of the deep and hard graven die that was the Jesuit's.

More than before Nigel felt that an active benevolence in regard to him ran like a golden thread through the tissue of Father Lamormain's talk, that, while urging self-immolation on the altar of the Empire, he urged it only as a means of spiritual safety from pitfalls that otherwise yawned for him in this world and the next.

To the hidden meaning Nigel possessed no clue. The one all-obliterating fact of his love for the Archduchess and her love for him prevented the die of the Jesuit making more than a faint permanent impression upon his mind, sufficient only to be memorable.

Father Lamormain seemed to be aware of this faintness of impression, for he sighed deeply as Nigel, having received his last benediction, took his final leave.

Nigel rode forth towards Bavaria fully determined to fight the Swede, but whether the eyes of Stephanie, or the heavenly crown pictured for him by Father Lamormain, glittered the more brightly to his thoughts, is a question each one must settle for himself.

One thing Father Lamormain had kept back, and that was the progress of the negotiations between the Emperor and Wallenstein, which were still at a delicate stage, and were yet shaping towards success.