They had come to the back
part of their tent, as if to speak confidentially, and their voices were
low, yet I could hear them quite distinctly, being separated from them
merely by two thicknesses of cloth. What I learned was this. There is
concealed in the forest, within half an hour's quick march of the
southern gate, a force of seven thousand soldiers. These soldiers belong
to the Archbishop of Mayence, who commands an additional three thousand
within the walls of Frankfort. Mayence holds the southern gate, as
Treves holds the western and Cologne the northern. You see at once what
that implies. Mayence can pour his troops into Frankfort, say, at
midnight, and in the morning he has ten thousand soldiers as compared
with the three thousand each commanded by the Archbishops of Treves and
Cologne. That means civil war, and the complete crushing of the two
northern Archbishops."
"I think you take too serious a view of the matter," commented Roland.
"Mayence is undoubtedly a subtle man, who takes every precaution that he
shall have his own way.
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