There was nothing to hinder an escape; the men slept the sleep of the
drunken; but the Schneiderlein, with the rough fidelity of a
retainer, would have lingered with a hope of saving his master. But
Eberhard shook his head, and signed again to escape; then, making him
bend down close to him, he used all his remaining power to whisper,
as he pressed his sword into the retainer's hand, -
"Go home; tell my mother--all the world--that Christina Sorel is my
wife, wedded on the Friedmund Wake by Friar Peter of Offingen, and if
she should bear a child, he is my true and lawful heir. My sword for
him--my love to her. And if my mother would not be haunted by me,
let her take care of her."
These words were spoken with extreme difficulty, for the nature of
the wound made utterance nearly impossible, and each broken sentence
cost a terrible effusion of blood. The final words brought on so
choking and fatal a gush that, said the Schneiderlein, "he fell back
as I tried to hold him up, and I saw that it was all at an end, and a
kind and friendly master and lord gone from me.
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