"Is it a sign that good angels will not let me be hurt?" she thought,
and, wearied out, she slept.
CHAPTER II: THE EYRIE
Christina Sorel awoke to a scene most unlike that which had been wont
to meet her eyes in her own little wainscoted chamber high in the
gabled front of her uncle's house. It was a time when the imperial
free towns of Germany had advanced nearly as far as those of Italy in
civilization, and had reached a point whence they retrograded
grievously during the Thirty Years' War, even to an extent that they
have never entirely recovered. The country immediately around them
shared the benefits of their civilization, and the free peasant-
proprietors lived in great ease and prosperity, in beautiful and
picturesque farmsteads, enjoying a careless abundance, and keeping
numerous rural or religious feasts, where old Teutonic mythological
observances had received a Christian colouring and adaptation.
In the mountains, or around the castles, it was usually very
different. The elective constitution of the empire, the frequent
change of dynasty, the many disputed successions, had combined to
render the sovereign authority uncertain and feeble, and it was
seldom really felt save in the hereditary dominions of the Kaiser for
the time being.
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