or heard all this. It did not make me thankful
nor even serve to comfort me.

All things were alike to me, even the Queen's gracious admonitions. The
diligent humility of great and small alike in their demeanor chilled me
in truth; sometimes meseemed it was in scorn.

To my lover, if to any man, Heaven's gates might open; yet had he
perished without shrift or sacrament, and I could never bear to be
absent when masses were said for his soul's redemption. Nay, and I was
fain to go to churches and chapels, inasmuch as I was secure there from
the speech of man. All that life could give or ask of me, I had ceased
to care for.

If, from the first, I had been required to bestir myself and bend my
will, matters had not perchance have gone so hard with me. The first
call on my strength worked as it were a charm. The need to act restored
the power to act: and a new and bitter experience which now befell was
as a draught of wine, making my heavy heart beat high and steady once
more. Nought, indeed, but some great matter could have roused me from
that dull half-sleep; nor was it long in coming, by reason that my
brother Herdegen's safety and life were in peril. This danger arose from
the fact that, not long ere the passage of arms at Altenperg, in despite
of strait enactments, the peace of the realm had many times been broken
under the very eyes of his Majesty by bloody combats, and the Elector
Conrad of Maintz had gone hand in hand with him of Brandenburg to
entreat his Majesty to make an example of this matter. These two were
likewise the most powerful of all the electors; the spiritual prince
had, at the closing of the Diet, been named Vicar of the Empire, and he
of Brandenburg was commander-in-chief of all the Imperial armies. And
his voice was of special weight in this matter, inasmuch as the great
friendship which had hitherto bound him to the Emperor had of late
cooled greatly, and both before and during the sitting of the Diet, his
Majesty had keenly felt what power the Brandenburger could wield, and
with what grave issues to himself.

Thus, when my lord the Elector and the high constable Frederick demanded
that the law should be carried out with the utmost rigor in the matter
of Herdegen, it was not, as many deemed, by reason that the King was not
at one with our good town and the worshipful council, and that he
was well content to vent his wrath on the son of one of its patrician
families, but contrariwise, that his M