The Archduke laughed with them,
and when the Provost addressed him, made as if he understood not,
till his father heard, and thundered out, 'How now, Philip! Deaf on
thy German ear? I tell thee, Herr Probst, he knows his own tongue as
well as thou or I, and thou shalt hear him speak as becomes the son
of an Austrian hunter.' That Romish king is a knight of knights,
Friedel. I could follow him to the world's end. I wonder whether he
will ever come to climb the Red Eyrie."
"It does not seem the world's end when one is there," said Friedel,
with strange yearnings in his breast.
"Even the Dom steeple never rose to its full height," he added,
standing in the window, and gazing pensively into the summer sky.
"Oh, Ebbo! this knighthood has come very suddenly after our many
dreams; and, even though its outward tokens be lowered, it is still a
holy, awful thing."
Nurtured in mountain solitude, on romance transmitted through the
pure medium of his mother's mind, and his spirit untainted by contact
with the world, Friedmund von Adlerstein looked on chivalry with the
temper of a Percival or Galahad, and regarded it with a sacred awe.
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