I charge thee, Friedel, do as
I do; be not too familiar with them. Could we but sprain an ankle
over the crag--"
"Nay, she would stay to nurse us," said Friedel, laughing; "besides,
thou art needed for the matter of homage."
"Look, Friedel," said Ebbo, sinking his voice, "I shall not lightly
yield my freedom to king or Kaiser. Maybe, there is no help for it;
but it irks me to think that I should be the last Lord of Adlerstein
to whom the title of Freiherr is not a mockery. Why dost bend thy
brow, brother? What art thinking of?"
"Only a saying in my mother's book, that well-ordered service is true
freedom," said Friedel. "And methinks there will be freedom in
rushing at last into the great far-off!"--the boy's eye expanded and
glistened with eagerness. "Here are we prisoners--to ourselves, if
you like--but prisoners still, pent up in the rocks, seeing no one,
hearing scarce an echo from the knightly or the poet world, nor from
all the wonders that pass. And the world has a history going on
still, like the Chronicle. Oh, Ebbo, think of being in the midst of
life, with lance and sword, and seeing the Kaiser--the Kaiser of the
holy Roman Empire!"
"With lance and sword, well and good; but would it were not at the
cost of liberty!"
However Ebbo forbore to damp his mother's joy, save by the one
warning--"Understand, mother, that I will not be pledged to anything.
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