Yet the more evident the
expediency became, the greater grew her distaste.
Still the lonely life weighed heavily on Ebbo. Light-hearted Friedel
was ever busy and happy, were he chasing the grim winter game--the
bear and wolf--with his brother, fencing in the hall, learning Greek
with the chaplain, reading or singing to his mother, or carving
graceful angel forms to adorn the chapel. Or he could at all times
soar into a minstrel dream of pure chivalrous semi-allegorical
romance, sometimes told over the glowing embers to his mother and
brother. All that came to Friedel was joy, from battling with the
bear on a frozen rock, to persuading rude little Hans to come to the
Frau Freiherrinn to learn his Paternoster. But the elder twin might
hunt, might fence, might smile or kindle at his brother's lay, but
ever with a restless gloom on him, a doubt of the future which made
him impatient of the present, and led to a sharpness and hastiness of
manner that broke forth in anger at slight offences.
"The matron's coif succeeding the widow's veil," Friedel heard him
muttering even in sleep, and more than once listened to it as Ebbo
leant over the battlements--as he looked over the white world to the
gray mist above the city of Ulm.
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