r about to be bestowed upon the younger and more beautiful
Countess von Sayn.

The Archbishop of Mayence, although a resident of the Castle, partook of
refreshment in the smallest room of the suite reserved for him, where he
was waited upon by his own servants and catered for by his own cook.

When the great Rhine salmon, smoking hot, was placed upon the table,
Cologne was generous in his praise of it, and related again, for the
information of his host and household, the story of the English Princess
who had partaken of a similar fish, doubtless in this same room. Despite
the historical bill of fare, and the mildly exhilarating qualities of
the excellent Oberweseler wine, whose delicate reddish color the
sentimental Archbishop compared to the blush on a bride's cheeks, the
social aspect of the midday refection was overshadowed by an almost
indefinable sense of impending danger. In the pseudogenial conversation
of the two Archbishops there was something forced: the attitude of the
elderly hostess was one of unrelieved gloom. After a few conventional
greetings to her young guest, she spoke no more during the meal. Her
daughter, who sat beside the Countess on the opposite side of the table
from his Lordship of Cologne, merely answered "Yes" or "No" to the
comments of the lady of Sayn praising the romantic situation of the
Castle, its unique qualities of architecture, and the splendid outlook
from its battlements, eulogies which began enthusiastically enough, but
finally faded away into silence, chilled by a reception so unfriendly.

Thus cast back upon her own thoughts, the girl grew more and more uneasy
as the peculiar features of the occasion became clearer in her own mind.
Here was her revered, beloved friend forcing hilarity which she knew he
could not feel, breaking bread and drinking wine with a colleague while
three thousand of his armed men peered down on the roof that sheltered
him, ready at a signal to pounce upon Stolzenfels like birds of prey,
capturing, and if necessary, slaying. She remembered the hearty cheers
that welcomed them on their arrival at Coblentz, yet every man who thus
boisterously greeted them, waving his bonnet in the air, was doubtless
an enemy. The very secrecy, the unknown nature of the danger, depressed
her more and more as she thought of it; the fierce soldiers hidden in
the forest, ready to leap up, burn and kill at an unknown sign from a
Prince of religion; the deadly weapons concealed