certainly they are alive! I met him again in Antwerp.
No one else can make you such armor. The devil is in it, if you hav'nt
heard of the Swabian armorer."

"The Swabian--the Swabian--is he my father?"

"Your own father. How long ago is it? Thirteen years, for I was then
sixteen. That was the last time I saw him, and yet I recognized him at
the first glance. True, I shall never forget the hour, when the dumb
woman drew the arrow from the Jew's breast. The scene I witnessed that
day in the forest still rises before my eyes, as if it were happening
now."

"He lives, they did not kill him!" exclaimed the Eletto, now first
beginning to rejoice over the surprising news. "Lips, man--Philipp!
I have found my mother again, and now my father too. Wait, wait! I'll
speak to the lieutenant, he must take my place, and you and I will ride
to Lier; there you will tell me the whole story. Holy Virgin! thanks, a
thousand thanks! I shall see my father again, my father!"

It was past midnight, but the schoolmates were still sitting over their
wine in a private room in the Lion at Lier. The Eletto had not grown
weary of questioning, and Count Philipp willingly answered.

Ulrich now knew what death the doctor had met, and that his father had
gone to Antwerp and lived there as an armorer for twelve years. The
Jew's dumb wife had died of grief on the journey, but Ruth was living
with the old man and kept house for him. Navarrete had often heard the
Swabian and his work praised, and wore a corselet from his workshop.

The count could tell him a great deal about Ruth. He acknowledged that
he had not sought Adam the Swabian for weapons, but on account of his
beautiful daughter. The girl was slender as a fir-tree! And her face!
once seen could never be forgotten. So might have looked the beautiful
Judith, who slew Holophernes, or Queen Zenobia, or chaste Lucretia of
Rome! She was now past twenty and in the bloom of her beauty, but cold
as glass; and though she liked him on account of his old friendship for
Ulrich and the affair in the forest, he was only permitted to look at,
not touch her. She would rejoice when she heard that Ulrich was still
alive, and what he had become. And the smith, the smith! Nay, he would
not go home now, but back to Antwerp to be Ulrich's messenger! But now
he too would like to relate his own experiences.

He did so, but in a rapid, superficial way, for the Eletto constantly
reverted to old days and his father. E