"
"The chief delight I could have, next to getting home, would be to
lay that fellow Rudiger on his back in the tilt-yard," said Ebbo.
But, as Rudiger was by four years his senior, and very expert, the
upshot of these encounters was quite otherwise, and the young
gentlemen were disabused of the notion that fighting came by nature,
and found that, if they desired success in a serious conflict, they
must practise diligently in the city tilt-yard, where young men were
trained to arms. The crossbow was the only weapon with which they
excelled; and, as shooting was a favourite exercise of the burghers,
their proficiency was not as exclusive as had seemed to Ebbo a
baronial privilege. Harquebuses were novelties to them, and they
despised them as burgher weapons, in spite of Sir Kasimir's assurance
that firearms were a great subject of study and interest to the King
of the Romans. The name of this personage was, it may be feared,
highly distasteful to the Freiherr von Adlerstein, both as
Wildschloss's model of knightly perfection, and as one who claimed
submission from his haughty spirit.
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