"
"I believe every syllable of it!" cried the Countess with enthusiasm,
"and glory that there is a mind brave enough, and a hand obedient to it,
to smoke out a robber and a murderer."
The tension this astonishing revelation caused was relieved by a laugh
from the Archbishop.
"My dear Hildegunde, you are forgetting your own ancestors. I venture
that no woman of the House of Sayn talked thus when the Emperor Rudolph
marched Count von Sayn to the scaffold. You would probably sing another
song if asked to restore the millions amassed by Henry III. of Sayn and
his successors; all accumulated by robbery as cruel as any that the Red
Margrave has perpetrated."
"My Lord," said the Countess proudly, "you had no need to ask that
question, for you knew the answer to it before you spoke. Every thaler I
control shall be handed over to Prince Roland, to be used for the
regeneration of his country."
Again the Archbishop laughed.
"Surely I knew that, my dear, and I should not have said what I did. I
suppose you will not allow me to vote against his Highness at the coming
Election.
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