is daughter, in
which he thought to read a gentle reproach, and the entreaties of
Albert, he at last consented to their importunities, and fixed a day,
to which the Duke acquiesced; but would allow of no one making the
necessary arrangements for the wedding but himself. Amidst the success
which had hitherto attended him, Ulerich did not forget those nights
when old Lichtenstein proved his attachment to him by his assiduous
attention to his wants, and when the delicate frame of his daughter
braved storm and cold to receive him at the gate of the castle, and
prepare warm food to cheer him when he came from the cavern. Neither
was the sacrifice which the bridegroom had made for his sake
obliterated from his memory. His noble mind was fully alive to the
fidelity, love, and sacrifices they had each so fully manifested, and,
therefore, he wished to prove his sense of gratitude to them. The
knight and his daughter had hitherto been his guests at the castle. He
now completely furnished a house for them near the collegiate church,
and, on the evening before the nuptials, he delivered the key of it to
the lady of Lichtenstein, begging her to make use of it whenever she
came to Stuttgardt.

The day at length arrived,--a day which Albert had once thought far
distant, but to which his most longing desire had ever been, constantly
directed. When he rose on that morning he recalled to his mind all the
circumstances which had happened to him since his heart had been
engaged, and was astonished to think how differently things had come to
pass to what he could have at first imagined. Who would ever have
supposed, when he rode through the beech wood towards his home, that
the happiness of possessing his beloved Bertha was not so distant as he
then had reason to fear? When he joined the League's army, in
opposition to the Duke, the very last thing that could have entered his
mind would have been that this same man, his enemy at that time, should
be the instrument of completing his happiness! He could now contemplate
in cheerful serenity the agitations of those days when he, with
difficulty, stole a moment to whisper a word to his beloved for fear of
her father, the avowed enemy of the League, And he thought of that hour
in Marie's garden, the most painful he had ever experienced, when he
took leave of Bertha, thinking she was lost to him for ever, whereas
this day was to bind them eternally together. Every word she had ever
spoken to him