LUTHERAN AND JESUIT.
The officer of the guard at the palace was not clear as to what he was
to do with his unintended catch. The fact that he was, or styled
himself, a Lutheran pastor, was, in Vienna, in the eyes of such an
officer, a criminal offence in itself. In addition, he had been caught
upon the wall of the orchard close in the gardens of the palace.
Upon examination he proved to be reticent even to moroseness. His only
explanation was that he had come to Vienna in search of a high-born
lady, the Countess Ottilie von Thüringen. The officer of the guard had
never heard of her, and till the morning had no one to consult. So
Pastor Rad spent an uncomfortable night. His supper was meagre. The
stone floor of the guard-room was hard, and the wind swept in under the
massive door and up the capacious chimney, incidentally swirling round
the Pastor's head and shoulders on its way. Half a dozen soldiers, who
smelt very vilely, sat round the fire and played cards with great zest,
and with oaths the most blood-curdling that Pastor Rad, who had heard
many things spoken in his lifetime, had ever heard. He slept badly.
The next day Father Lamormain, who heard of everything, heard of this
incident and sent for Pastor Rad.
It was the mark of Father Lamormain that he was uniformly courteous. He
kept all his hatred under lock and key. And his hatred of Lutheranism
was perhaps the profoundest passion of his life, next to the love he
bore to his own order of the regular priests. If Father Lamormain could
have gathered all the Lutheran ministry together, and compounded them
into one man, and severed that man's head from his body, he would have
acquiesced in that monstrous execution, without personal gratification,
but with a sense that the most desirable of events had come to pass. But
to address an individual Lutheran (minister and layman were alike to
him) with a frown, with harsh speech, or even with mild contempt, was
impossible to him.
Pastor Rad, unkempt as to his abundant yellow hair, muddy as to his
raiment, presented an object for easy ridicule. Father Lamormain's
secretary led him in with an air of apology. The Emperor's confessor
requested him to be seated, and asked him if he had broken his fast.
Pastor Rad, much taken aback by his reception at the hands of this
renowned enemy of his faith, said No! Father Lamormain bade his
secretary give him what he needed, and bring him back in an hour.
The secretary, understanding all his instructions implied, brought him
back washed, combed, brushed, and recognisable as a Lutheran pastor as
far as externals went.
Pastor Rad was greatly mollified by these attentions, and found grace
enough to return thanks.
"And now," said Father Lamormain, "you will pardon me, Pastor Rad, if I
ask you a few questions. You came to Vienna from Prague?"
"Yes!" said the pastor.
"At Prague, I understand, you found it necessary to speed some of the
Catholic fugitives with exhortations?"
Pastor Rad admitted it. On reflection this seemed to be a gentle
description of his sonorous revilings; but he wondered how much Father
Lamormain knew and how he knew it. He also considered that it behoved
him to be careful.
"May I ask you what brought you to Prague?"
"In search of one, a maiden, named Elspeth Reinheit, a member of my
flock from Eisenach."
"How did she come thither?"
"I had learned that she set out for Prague in company of a certain
Countess Ottilie von Thüringen."
"Yes?"
"I learned that the Countess had set out for Vienna, and followed."
"Truly a good shepherd!" said Father Lamormain pleasantly. "You left the
ninety-and-nine at Eisenach to discover your one lost lamb in Vienna!"
"And this Countess?"
"No one knows her in Vienna!"
"So you went to look for her in the orchard close in the palace
gardens?"
Pastor Rad hesitated. Then he said--
"I did not seek her there. But she was there!"
"Yes!" said Father Lamormain. "You saw her!"
"No, I heard her voice!"
"So you knew her voice?"
"Yes, I had met her in Magdeburg during the siege!"
"She is a Lutheran also?"
"She consorted with the Lutherans! I know nothing of her except that she
has been at the Wartburg staying with the Landgrave's family."
Pastor Rad suddenly began to suspect that he was too confidential.
"She is evidently a lady of rank!" said the Jesuit. "She was alone in
the orchard?"
"No! She was with a cavalier."
"Ah! You knew him also?"
"Yes! I do not know his name! I saw him first at Magdeburg. He was a
fierce fighter. He is a foreigner. I saw him yesterday as he rode away
from the palace, and he lodges in the Fremdengasse. He is an officer."
"You seemed to have followed him! Did you suspect him of stealing your
lamb?"
"Yes!" said Pastor Rad with an indignation which was not fictitious.
"And instead you found him with this strange Countess! Can you describe
her to me?"
"She is very tall. She has dark hair, dark eyes, red lips, a pale
complexion, and bears herself proudly!"
"Ah! Such a one can hardly escape notice in Vienna!" said the Jesuit.
"And what is your purpose with this maiden--this Elspeth Reinheit?"
"To take her back to her father, and if she be indeed yet a true maid,
to marry her!"
"She would scarcely have suffered loss in company of a great lady?"
"I do not know anything of great ladies! But I have many reasons to
think this foreign officer may have wronged her--even in Magdeburg."
"'Judge not, that ye be not judged,' Pastor Rad. I promise that, if she
be in Vienna, she shall be handed over to you. See to it that you deal
tenderly with your lamb in return for our gentle dealing with you."
"I was robbed of my money!" Pastor Rad complained.
"It shall be repaid to you twice over," said the Jesuit. "How much was
it?"
The pastor told him, and the Jesuit noted it on his tablets.
"Now get to your lodgings and wait there a day. A servant shall go with
you."
On the same day Nigel Charteris was summoned by the Emperor's Military
Council, and bidden make his way through Bavaria to join his old
commander Count Tilly. There and not in Austria or Bohemia it was
thought that a period might be put to the King of Sweden's progress.
Tilly had men enough in conjunction with the Elector Maximilian's, but
lacked officers. The Council feared the Saxons less, who were at Prague,
and so in a manner at their doors, than the foreigner Gustavus, who had
so signally shown his mastery alike upon the Elbe and upon the Rhine.
Asking what forces he was to conduct, he was told that a mere escort
would be sufficient. The road was open, and speed alone was necessary.
Nigel was more flattered than if three regiments had been confided to
him, for the Council made it appear that it was he, Nigel, and not
regiments, that was wanted. He knew that at the moment there was no
superfluity of troops in and around Vienna to defend it should the
Saxons decide to move southward, but his experience of the behaviour of
the Saxon troops at Breitenfeld had left him with a poor opinion of
their courage, their initiative, and their leadership.
Father Lamormain saw him after he had received his orders. He made no
reference to Pastor Rad, of whose nearness Nigel was unaware, nor to the
orchard close, nor to Stephanie. That some prowler or other had been
about the trysting-place Nigel was aware, and, on account of the
Archduchess, he had refrained from encountering him. Having seen nothing
himself, he imagined that his own and his mistress's persons had enjoyed
a like invisibility. Unaccustomed to fear himself, he had not understood
why Stephanie in her concluding embrace had trembled and clung to him
with the mingled weakness, tenderness, and passionate strength of which
woman is capable at supreme moments of danger. It had touched his
heart. It had left him determined that nothing at the last should
separate them but the hand of death itself. So he looked upon this
expected summons to resume duty at the front with the confidence of
youth, that nothing but a few short weeks lay between him and her he
loved,--weeks perhaps in which he might compass more of that military
glory he coveted, and so lessen the distance that yawned between them.
What if he should find the opportunity to wrest from the pretendedly
reluctant and chaffering Wallenstein the laurels of the Empire to lay at
her feet?
So Nigel met Father Lamormain with no suspicion at the back of his mind,
but rather with brave hopes and the supreme joy that a man feels who
knows that he is beloved by her whom he conceives to be the star of
womanhood.
Father Lamormain bade him exert himself to the utmost. He told him that
the armies of Tilly and Maximilian constituted the final barrier that
prevented the Swedish hosts, reinforced by Germans from every Protestant
state, from rolling through Bavaria, resistless as the Danube in flood,
and finally reaching Vienna. He made him feel, as the clumsy brief
remarks and explanations of the Army Council had not, though they had
borne some suggestion, that on his own personal devotion and
intelligence depended the whole fortune of the Empire. The appeal was
the more sure that it was in the first place an appeal to his simple
loyalty as a mercenary soldier, and not to his nationality. In the
second place, Father Lamormain appealed to his faith. He spoke in no
uncertain way of the fate of those heretics who should fall, striving
against the Emperor and Holy Church. He touched slightly on the
indifference of the Holy Father, Urban the Eighth, to the calls of the
Emperor for succour, and the apparent hostility of the fervently
Catholic King of France and his Cardinal Minister. He deplored them, but
did not gloss them over. He was evidently, so Nigel thought, working
towards producing in Nigel a proper state of mind from which might
spring the spiritual flower of a heroic death. It was the rule of the
order. For the individual, sacrifice; for the cause of the order,
everything that might enhance its progress.
It was as if the Jesuit strove to wean him from earthly aims, to instil
into him something of the essence of his own self-lessness: and, for the
brief while that the audience lasted, Nigel's soul and mind took some
impress in its wax of youth of the deep and hard graven die that was the
Jesuit's.
More than before Nigel felt that an active benevolence in regard to him
ran like a golden thread through the tissue of Father Lamormain's talk,
that, while urging self-immolation on the altar of the Empire, he urged
it only as a means of spiritual safety from pitfalls that otherwise
yawned for him in this world and the next.
To the hidden meaning Nigel possessed no clue. The one all-obliterating
fact of his love for the Archduchess and her love for him prevented the
die of the Jesuit making more than a faint permanent impression upon his
mind, sufficient only to be memorable.
Father Lamormain seemed to be aware of this faintness of impression, for
he sighed deeply as Nigel, having received his last benediction, took
his final leave.
Nigel rode forth towards Bavaria fully determined to fight the Swede,
but whether the eyes of Stephanie, or the heavenly crown pictured for
him by Father Lamormain, glittered the more brightly to his thoughts,
is a question each one must settle for himself.
One thing Father Lamormain had kept back, and that was the progress of
the negotiations between the Emperor and Wallenstein, which were still
at a delicate stage, and were yet shaping towards success.