be born who would be
unworthy of such a fief and faithless to his lord and Emperor seems to me
impossible. Three villages and broad forests, with fields and meadows,
pertain to the estate. As lord of Reichenbach, it will be easy for you to
pay the blood money, if your father-in-law is not too importunate a
creditor."

The latter certainly would not be that, and it cost Ernst Ortlieb no
effort to bend the knee gratefully before the kindly monarch.

The Emperor Rudolph accepted the homage, but he clasped the young lord of
Reichenbach to his heart like a beloved son, and as he placed Eva's hand
in his, and she raised her beautiful face to him, he stooped and kissed
her with fatherly kindness.

When Wolff entreated him to bless his alliance in the place of his
suffering father, he did so gladly; and Els also willingly offered him
her lips; when he requested the same favour her sister had granted him,
that he might boast of the kisses bestowed on him by the two beautiful
Es, Nuremberg's fairest maidens.

CHAPTER XIX.

Heinz heeded Cordula's warning. In the royal hall every one would have
been justified in believing him a very cool lover, but during the walk
with Eva to the lodgings of his cousin Maier of Silenen, where the
Schurlins, Ortliebs, Wolff, and Herr Pfinzing and his wife were to meet
to celebrate the betrothal, the moon, whose increasing crescent was again
in the sky, beheld many things which gave her pleasure.

The priest soon united Heinz and Eva, but the celestial pilgrim willingly
resigned the power formerly exerted over the maiden to the husband, who
clasped her to his heart with tender love.

Luna was satisfied with Wolff and Els also. She afterwards watched the
fate of both couples in Swabia and Nuremberg, and when the showy
escutcheon was removed from the Eysvogel mansion, and a more modest one
put in its place, she was gratified.

She soon saw that a change had also been made in the one above the door
of the Ortlieb house, for the Ortlieb coat of arms, in accordance with
the family name, had borne the figure of a cat, the animal which loves
the place,--[Ort, place.]--the house to which it belongs, but on the
wedding day of the two beautiful Es the Emperor Rudolph had commanded
that, in perpetual remembrance of its two loveliest daughters, the
Ortliebs should henceforward bear on their escutcheon two linden leaves
under tendrils, the symbol of loyal steadfastness.

When, a few months after