A FATHER, A CONFESSOR, AND A DAUGHTER.
The Emperor Ferdinand and Father Lamormain were together in the
Emperor's private apartments.
"She was always Stephanie the intractable!" said the Emperor, with
something like a smile on his grave face. After all he had many memories
of her that Father Lamormain could never have of any child.
"Yes!" said Father Lamormain. "But in this case your Imperial Majesty
should permit itself to use its parental authority."
"Even to harshness?"
"Even to harshness!" said the priest in a gentle voice. "Your Majesty
knows that the Elector Maximilian still claims that the Empire owes him
thirteen millions of crowns for his aid in the war against the Elector
Palatine, and that he wanted the Palatinate, and would have had it but
for the opposition of Brandenburg and Saxony. Now if Brandenburg and
Saxony join Gustavus, as they must, what can we say to Maximilian if he
prefers his claim again?"
"He must have it, I suppose!" said the Emperor in a tone that suggested
that he was rather tired.
"Then he will ask for Bohemia as the price for allowing his army to
support Tilly against Gustavus."
"Bohemia is another affair!" said the Emperor more briskly.
"Now if her Highness the Archduchess would only consent to marry the
Elector Maximilian, we should hear nothing more of the thirteen
millions, or of the Palatinate, or of Bohemia," reflected Father
Lamormain aloud.
"She is very young!" objected his Majesty.
"Not too young for mischief, sire."
"What new freak have you discovered, Father?"
"This!" said the Father, producing the letter he had had before him on
the previous day. "It is a summary of the roll of Tilly's army, and it
was found upon a messenger, who was unfortunately killed on his way to
the north _before he could be questioned_."
"But what has this to do with the Archduchess Stephanie?"
"It is marvellously like her handwriting! It is in cipher, of course;
but look for yourself, sire." The Emperor looked at it.
"It appears to be a woman's, and it is a most unclerkly scrawl. I should
hesitate to attribute it to Stephanie! And, if it were hers, what
possible object could she have in obtaining it, and how could she have
obtained it?"
"It was in my hands, your Majesty, before the despatches arrived."
"But the seal on the despatches was intact. It was Count Tilly's seal.
The Chancellor was satisfied?"
"Yes, sire!" The tone signified that Chancellors as a rule were easily
satisfied.
"Come, Father, do you seriously suggest that the officer who brought it
allowed the despatches to leave his hands?"
Father Lamormain had every cause to suppose so, but was unable for
reasons of his own to state so.
"I merely infer from this cipher!"
"But it was not impossible that the roll of Tilly's army should be known
to others, within a little!"
"Your Majesty's remark would be just if the messenger had been
intercepted riding from Magdeburg. But from Eger, by which the officer
passed? What then?"
"That would be to doubt the officer's fidelity. To begin with, he is a
Scottish gentleman! He is of our faith! He is selected by Tilly, who has
a good eye for a man."
"Then your Majesty does not wish the matter pursued in that direction."
Father Lamormain was quite pleasant about it. He went on--
"I may say that I had a little talk with this young officer this morning
in the gardens, and he appears to be a gentleman of good breeding, and
of an ancient family, very well mannered, and wary withal. Your Majesty
would be the better judge how far he is to be trusted if he were bidden
to your reception after supper to-night. For the orders your Majesty
will send to Tilly will be still more secret!" The Father seemed full of
the most paternal feelings towards this young man, at the same time very
desirous that the young man should not prove a prodigal son.
"As to the Archduchess Stephanie," said the Emperor, "I will speak to
her on the subject of Maximilian. It is an ill time to consider
marriages when there is so much at stake, but our faithful Elector can
scarcely be bidden to wait _at his age_!" The Emperor had then a dry
kind of humour. "You may send for her, Father, on my behalf!"
Father Lamormain pocketed his letter and retired. In a short time the
Archduchess made her entry into her father's presence.
Her face wore the softness that is the outcome of an affectionate
nature. The fine meshes of the veil of rank that fell between her and
the rest of the world, obscuring the expression, were absent.
Ferdinand's eye swept over her tall gracious form as she approached, and
as she bent her knee to kiss his hand. He approved, but it made no
difference. He was not a prince to be swayed by womanly beauty. Some
princes have spent their lives toying with women; some have made women
their pastimes in the brief intervals of strenuous attention to war and
to affairs; but Ferdinand was a prince of affairs in which women had no
place. As a father, however, he was not wanting in affection.
"My Stephanie!" he said, when he had kissed her upon the cheek.
"Politics are a very troublous thing, and all kinds of considerations
come into play. The alliances in marriage between princes and princesses
are dictated by the necessities of their States rather than by any
inclination of their own."
The Emperor felt, because Stephanie, sitting on a low stool at his side,
had her hands upon her father's, that the blood stirred very palpably,
and he knew that she listened.
"The turn of events has brought your name into question. The Elector
Maximilian has put forward a project of marriage. He asks for you."
A crimson flush overspread those pale clear cheeks. So much Ferdinand
saw. She kept her gaze steadily away from him.
"What do you think of it, little one?"
She turned her head and looked up at her father, her eyes widely open.
"I think it monstrous! That old man! A man who has already lived a
thousand lives to make his last mumbling meal of me who am just newly
come into my womanhood! Monstrous! Unspeakably monstrous!"
"He is of a ripe age, certainly, is my cousin Maximilian. He is in fact
fifty-eight, as I am. But he is still full of vigour, a leader of men, a
great and renowned prince, and our most trusty ally. Once at least we
had been in grave jeopardy but for his counsel and for his armies. Even
now we are employing his men and generals in support of our Edicts."
"To slay peaceable burghers, burn their goods, throw down their houses,
ravish their daughters! Say this rather!"
"My daughter!" said Ferdinand, and his voice became cold and haughty,
"you forget! As a good son of the Church I am bound to extirpate that
most pernicious root of heresy from all German lands. There can be no
peace till this is done."
The Archduchess Stephanie had gauged her father's religious fanaticism
and found it deep, deeper than any measuring-stick of hers. She did not
sympathise with it. Like most women she was herself prone to the
practices of religion, and in the conduct of life a pagan. She saw no
benefit that could come out of the Edict of Restitution. To her mind,
money, or goods, or lands were to pass out of the hands of very worthy
industrious burghers to maintain lazy and often very dirty priests and
monks. She thought it was barely possible, but still possible, for
people to get to heaven somehow without them. The Emperor was quite
satisfied that they could not. His intentions were sincere, and the
Archduchess knew that it was useless to pursue the attack along this
line.
"The fall of Magdeburg," she said, "might bring about some sort of
alliance of all the Protestant powers. Brandenburg and Saxony at least
must join Gustavus. Denmark, the United Provinces, may follow."
"The more reason have we to keep hold of such friends as we have by what
entertainment we may."
"Have you so little faith in Maximilian that you should judge him
capable of drawing off his men when he learns that I will not wed him?"
"I have always found Maximilian loyal to the Empire. But a friendship
such as his should be requited."
"Then let him be requited with gold or with lands, but not with me. Let
him draw off his men, his Pappenheim. Then send for the man who shall
sweep Gustavus back to his ships, him for whom the Empire waits, him who
alone can create armies at a word and lead them."
"Who _is_ this Achilles?" was the faintly ironical question of the
Emperor.
"Who but Albrecht von Waldstein?" was the instant, almost triumphant,
answer of the Archduchess. She had risen to her feet and faced him with
it, voice and gesture and eyes aglow with a conviction that betrayed an
intense energy of desire behind it. The Emperor gazed at her with his
pale scrutinising eyes, in which was no enthusiasm.
"My dear Stephanie," he said in his half-wearied tone, "if Wallenstein
were not a man of middle age, who has married a second wife, one might
almost suspect that you were enamoured of him."
She held herself erect, looking at the Emperor, but her eyes were upon a
vision far beyond. She said nothing, for the Emperor had not made an
end. He had dealt her this thrust of scorn. Now he assailed her with
reason.
"It is a year since, on the Elector's day at Regensburg, they clamoured
one and all for Wallenstein's dismissal. They urged that he was become
too powerful for a subject."
"Maximilian's jealousy!" she interposed.
"Maximilian was one amongst many! I judged the advice sound. I dismissed
Wallenstein. My foes were beaten down. There was no need to maintain an
army of seventy thousand men in the field to nourish the ambition of a
general. It is enough, Stephanie. No good can come of princesses
meddling in politics. Look to it that you entreat not our cousin
Maximilian slightingly, or even with less than the graciousness that
becomes a princess. I am too indulgent. The affair can wait till it be
considered further. You would not be the first princess of the house of
Habsburg to wed without love. Therefore make no grievance of it!"
He held out his hand, which the Archduchess bent over and kissed, and
she left the Emperor once more alone.