Manchurian Books

Here was her revered, beloved friend forcing hilarity which she knew he
could not feel, breaking bread and drinking wine with a colleague while
three thousand of his armed men peered down on the roof that sheltered
him, ready at a signal to pounce upon Stolzenfels like birds of prey,
capturing, and if necessary, slaying. She remembered the hearty cheers
that welcomed them on their arrival at Coblentz, yet every man who thus
boisterously greeted them, waving his bonnet in the air, was doubtless
an enemy. The very secrecy, the unknown nature of the danger, depressed
her more and more as she thought of it; the fierce soldiers hidden in
the forest, ready to leap up, burn and kill at an unknown sign from a
Prince of religion; the deadly weapons concealed in a Church of Christ:
all this grim reality of a Faith she held dear had never been hinted at
by the gentle nuns among whom she lived so happily for the greater part
of her life.
At last her somber hostess rose, and Hildegunde, with a sigh of relief,
followed her example.


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