he city the decease of an "honourable" member of the Council, a
secular or ecclesiastical prince. The mourning banner was already waving
on the roof of the Town Hall, towards which he turned. Men in the service
of the city were hoisting other black flags upon the almshouse, and now
the Hegelein--[Proclaimer of decrees]--in mourning garments, mounted on a
steed caparisoned with crepe, came riding by at the head of other
horsemen clad in sable, proclaiming to the throng that Hartmann, the
Emperor Rudolph's promising son, had found an untimely end. The noble
youth was drowned while bathing in the Rhine.

It seemed as if a frost had blighted a blooming garden. The gay bustle in
the market place was paralysed. The loud sobs of many women blended with
exclamations of grief and pity from bearded lips which had just been
merrily bargaining for salt and fish, meat and game. Messengers with
crepe on their hats or caps forced a passage through the throng, and a
train of German knights, priests, and monks passed with bowed heads,
bearing candles in their hands, between the Town Hail and St. Sebald's
Church towards the corn magazine and the citadel.

Meanwhile dark clouds were spreading slowly over the bright-blue vault of
the June sky. A flock of rooks hovered around the Town Hall, and then
flew, with loud cries, towards the castle.

Seitz watched them indifferently. Even the great omnipotent sovereign
there had his own cross to bear; tears flowed in his proud palace also,
and sighs of anguish were heard. And this was just. He had never wished
evil to any one who did not injure him, but even if he could have averted
this sore sorrow from the Emperor Rudolph he would not have stirred a
finger. His coronation had been a blow to him and to his brothers.
Formerly they had been permitted to work their will on the highways, but
the Hapsburg, the Swiss, had pitilessly stopped their brigandage. Now for
the first time robber-knights were sentenced and their castles destroyed.
The Emperor meant to transform Germany into a sheepfold, Absbach
exclaimed. The Siebenburg brothers were his faithful allies, and though
they complained that the joyous, knightly clank of arms would be silenced
under such a sovereign, they themselves took care that the loud battle
shouts, cries of pain, and shrieks for aid were not hushed on the roads
used for traffic by the merchants. But this was not Seitz's sole reason
for shrugging his shoulders at the expressions