THE GUESTS OF THE ABBOT OF FULDA.
Of the earlier marches of Colonel Nigel Charteris it is not needful to
say anything. For the first day brought them across the plains to
Budweiss, where a strong garrison of the Emperor's troops lay, and the
next to the Bohmerwald, crossing which they came into Bavaria, and so on
the evening of the fourth day made Nuremberg. Bavaria being a country
ruled by that masterful Duke Maximilian, who was a pupil of the Jesuits,
though of a far more flexible mind than his cousin Ferdinand, was a
stronghold of Catholicism, and, beyond a few natural grumbles at having
to find quarters and food for so undesirable-looking a regiment, placed
no obstacles in their way.
Nuremberg certainly showed a sullenness of the populace which seemed to
indicate that below the surface there was a strong Protestant feeling,
despite Maximilian's orthodoxy, but to Nigel it mattered little. His
march next led him to Bamberg, a town entirely dominated by a Catholic
Bishop, and a hostelry on the "Priestlane" to the Rhine, as the chain of
Bishoprics was called by the untaught lewd of the Protestants. The next
stage was Fulda, the seat of the Abbot of St Boniface, across the
Bavarian border, and before him lay on one side the westernmost strip
of the Thüringian forest, and on the other the State of Hesse Cassel.
Now and again in Bavaria Nigel heard news of the army that was with
Pappenheim and Tilly. He learned that no action had been fought, that
the Elector of Saxony was still maintaining a neutrality, though he had
gathered large numbers of troops. Of Gustavus he learned nothing.
Evidently he was still in Pomerania. Nigel anticipated a peaceful march
through the territories he had yet to traverse, albeit they were
territories still Protestant in the main.
The Abbot of Fulda was the chief of all the abbots of the Empire. His
territory extended twenty miles to the north and fifteen from east to
west. It was for the most part a fertile plain of great cultivation
lying between two ranges of hills which met at the northmost angle of a
rough triangle. Fulda itself was in the south of the domain and near the
Bavarian border. For forty years or more the Abbots of Fulda had kept
Lutheranism at bay with as much zeal as the Emperor himself, while Hesse
Cassel and Thüringia, the neighbouring states, had as sedulously
fostered the heresy.
Nigel and his men readily gained entry to the town, and were surprised,
as they rode through, at the palace of the Abbot and the buildings
inhabited by his dependants and officers as well as those of the abbey
itself, where the monks continued to extol, if not to emulate, the
holiness of St Boniface, whose bones lay beneath the altar in the chapel
beneath the choir of the cathedral. The town reflected in its shops and
dwellings as well as in the dress of its inhabitants the wealth and
prosperity of the Abbot, for the shrine of St Boniface brought numerous
pilgrims, and the long and orderly rule of the Church for long
generations over the domains had enabled the abbey to accumulate a
considerable treasure. Nor were evidences lacking that the Abbot was
alive to the scriptural advice about the strong man armed keeping his
goods in peace. For the Abbot commanded a goodly assemblage of lay
brothers, who acted as his fighting force, for reprisals or for defence.
The object of their visit being explained to the chief officer of the
abbey, quarters were assigned to the men and horses in the outlying
portions, while Nigel and Hildebrand were received with much ceremony
into the palace of the Prince-Abbot himself, and treated with every
courtesy as the representatives of the Emperor.
The Abbot loved good cheer, and those who sat at meat with him had no
cause to complain of famine or of drought, nor was he himself sparing.
Beside the two soldiers were two of the Abbot's principal officers, and
another gentleman, like the soldiers, a sojourner in the territories of
Fulda. The high cheek-bones and small dark eyes, the swarthy gipsy-like
complexion, all denoted an Eastern birthplace.
The Abbot presented the newcomers to him and named him as the Count von
Teschen. His manners were pleasant. He was affable, but it was an
affability that told nothing.
"So you were at Magdeburg!" said the Abbot. "A grave blunder!"
Nigel looked questioningly.
"Not on your part, colonel! Nor for that matter on Tilly's. But the
Jesuits!"
"But Magdeburg had flouted the Edict!" opposed Nigel.
"Magdeburg was at fault too!" smiled the Abbot. "The Emperor is a good
Catholic. So am I, I trust. But the Emperor is too Spanish in his
Catholicism. Lutheranism was a kind of quartan fever, a theologic
plague, a wen into which all manner of foul humours of discontent
drained till it burst. It should have been allowed to exhaust itself.
What did my predecessors do? They sat fast. They rewarded their good
faithful Catholics. They made no wholesale persecution of the heretics,
of whom there were a few. But the heretics found out that the true faith
paid them better. Here and there one was quietly deprived of his farm or
of our custom. Lutheranism grew stale, as all these violent uprisings
must. The old order continued. Little by little, when those tinged with
heresy saw that we were not to be moved, they came back."
"They were long-headed men, the Abbots of Fulda! Now Fulda trades with
Hesse Cassel and with Thuringia, which are both Lutheran. We exchange
our cattle and our wine and leather for their goods or their money, and
do not find fault because either smells of Lutheranism."
"It sounds reasonable!" said the Count von Teschen.
"Edicts are all very well," the Abbot continued, "but if edicts are
going to destroy men and women and children, homesteads, workshops,
trade, they are going to destroy our revenues."
"But surely," suggested Nigel, "our Father the Pope approved of the
Emperor's Edict and the means he took to enforce it."
The Abbot smiled with great benignity.
"If the Grand Turk issued an edict that all his subjects should become
Christians, would not the Holy Father approve? Without a doubt! But if
the Grand Turk applied to His Holiness for a million of gold crowns to
assist him in his task of conversion?"
"I wager," said Hildebrand, "His Holiness would not subscribe a single
rix-dollar!"
"It would be a pious aspiration! And so was our Pope's. They call him
Pope Lutheranus. He was not willing to discourage the Emperor Ferdinand
in his desires to restore to the church what the church had lost, but
he has not shown himself willing to contribute out of the treasure of
Rome to set armies marching hither and thither over the peaceful lands
of Germany to enforce his aspiration. Let well alone!"
"The Duke of Friedland allowed himself to be dismissed," said the Count
von Teschen, "because he saw that it was the Emperor's desire to make
him the instrument of oppression to the Protestants."
Nigel's ears pricked up. Who was this that spoke so intimately of
Wallenstein's mind?
"Doubtless he saw also," said the Abbot, "that the ideas of the Emperor
would draw together all the Protestant powers. It is coming to that.
Even my neighbour the Landgrave of Hesse Cassel is but now on his way,
if he has not already started, to join Gustavus."
"Indeed!" said Count von Teschen. There was that in his look and tone
which suggested to Nigel that it was news to him, and unwelcome news.
"Moreover, my neighbours of Thüringia are in a ferment and have raised
up at least a regiment to march into Saxony."
"To what end?" said Nigel. "It is thought the Elector, John George, is
too well affected to the Emperor."
"John George is by nature peaceful! But he is gathering an army. And if
the Emperor were as politic as he is a good Catholic he would say to
John George, 'Come! Let us talk no more about edicts. Let us drive out
the Swedes.' But he cannot. He is too headstrong, and too sure of John
George. And John George has his people to consider. Do you think
Magdeburg has softened _them_? Has not every village had its separate
tale, and, as for Thüringia, there is a preacher called Pastor Rad, who
has painted the fall of Magdeburg from one end of the forest to the
other in the colours of Sodom and Gomorrah. Beware how you and your
troops ride through the forest. Just now the sight of a casque or a
gorget would madden the peasantry till not one trooper of your regiment
would remain to ride his horse."
Nigel was not ungrateful to the Abbot for his warning, though he
suspected the dignitary of an inclination to exaggerate. He was no
coward, but he had seen enough of the Forest to know its solitudes of
trees, the deep beds of leaves that lay in the hollows, undisturbed from
year to year, till those of ten years ago had become thick black soft
earth in which a man's body might lie and moulder silently and surely
till the bones parted company. In the Forest a shrewd bolt from an old
cross-bow, an opportune thrust of pike from behind a tree, a stone well
dropped from a bough, might each and all thin his ranks and no enemy be
seen.
But these gruesome forebodings were set aside by something the genial
and talkative host was saying to Count von Teschen.
"Prague! I have never journeyed thither! They say the Duke of Friedland
has a goodly dwelling." He looked round complacently. "Our own is not
amiss seeing what a patchwork the ages and my predecessors have made of
it. Is the Duke's greater?"
"It is in a great park!" said Count von Teschen. There are six gates to
its outer walls, and he has twenty gentlemen of birth serving him as if
he were the King of France. The servants and horsemen are numberless,
and his riches make the whole expense appear but a tithe of them.
"And how does he spend his time?"
"You have heard of his astrologer?"
"Has he an astrologer of his own?"
"Aye! One Master Seni! 'Tis not the only one, for I have heard of
another, Master Pietro Bramante, who travels up and down and visits him
at times."
"And what do they that a man cannot do for himself?"
"I know not! All they do they do in secret. But 'tis said they both
watch the stars for signs."
"As Cæsar watched the entrails of the sacrifice for signs!" said the
Abbot with a laugh. "But I wager that Don Cæsar could always find the
auspices propitious, if his own plans were ripe."
This caustic comment did not seem to please Count von Teschen, for he
said nothing but smiled an unpleasant smile that showed his fine white
teeth.
"You may tell the Duke that I was much gratified by his gift. That
antique mitre of old goldsmith's work and the rochet will be famous
additions to our Abbey's treasure-house, and that which he has sent me
of a more personal kind is very precious to an old man who finds much of
his enjoyment in his toys."
Count von Teschen expressed his thanks for the Abbot's appreciation and
promised deliverance of the message.
The Abbot, on his part, promised to show them the treasures of St
Boniface on the morrow, and after a little while of further talk the
guests were shown with all ceremony to their bedchambers.
Nigel was nothing loth. But he had no sooner found his couch than he
began to con over this Count von Teschen. That he was an emissary of
Wallenstein was plain: but that a rich nobleman should send presents
appropriate in character to a rich prelate had nothing suspicious in it.
If Wallenstein had lost favour and power mainly through the loss of the
support of the great Catholic electors, the Bishops of Mainz, Cologne,
and Treves, it was not so wonderful that he should by indirect methods
attempt to curry favour with a man like the Abbot of Fulda, who was
almost the equal of the great Prince-Bishops, and would share their
politics and their fortunes. But was this _all_ the task of the
emissary? Was it not possibly a cover to his real purpose, an end in
itself, but only a minor one? If it were so, how was Nigel on the
Abbot's own friendly territory to bid Count von Teschen stand and
deliver, backed though he was by three hundred indifferent horsemen,
many of whom were Count von Teschen's own countrymen? It is to be feared
that Nigel's last prayers before sleep came were not for the salvation
of Father Lamormain.
The next morning Nigel and Hildebrand met the Abbot, who had with him
Count von Teschen, at the hour of nine, and made the round of the
Cathedral and the treasure-house and the principal apartments of the
palace and the abbey, which occupied them well till the hour of dinner,
when they were again treated with sumptuous liberality. The meal over,
Count von Teschen took his leave, and Nigel was unable to see him
depart: but for this he had taken measures. The Abbot seemed very
willing to detain the others, and asked particularly to see the muster
of the troops and an exercise or two, for his tastes seemed to lie
strongly towards secular matters. Nigel could do no less than gratify
him, and though he himself was quite aware that his men were far from
showing the discipline and skill of the veteran troops he had once led,
the display pleased his host, and occupied a good deal of time.
His first question of Sergeant Blick was as to the direction taken by
the Count. When he learned that it was on towards the borders of Hesse
Cassel he was possessed by eagerness to set off, which, however, he had
to restrain till he could take decent leave of the prelate.
"You have a good many Bohemians in your ranks, colonel!" said the Abbot.
It was significant that the Abbot of St Boniface could put two and two
together.
"Aye," said Nigel to himself, "corbies dinna pick oot corbies' een!"