u the
sights of the city, as if we were two young people in from the country."

"I am a country girl, please to remember," said the Countess. "I know
nothing of Frankfort, or, indeed, of any other large town."

"I am glad of that, for there is much to see in Frankfort. We will make
for the Cathedral, that beautiful red building, splendid and grand,
where we should have been married with great and useless ceremony if I
had been crowned Emperor. But I am sure the simple chapel in the working
town of Sachsenhausen better suits a sword maker and his bride."

Now they came out into the busy street, which seemed more thronged than
ever. In making their way to the Cathedral, the mob became so dense that
progression was difficult. The current seemed setting in one direction,
and it carried them along with it. Hildegunde took the young man's arm,
and clung close to him.

"They are driving us, whether we will or no, towards our old enemy, the
Archbishop of Mayence. That is his Palace facing the square. There is
some sort of demonstration going on," cried Roland, as cheer after cheer
ascended to the heavens. "How grim and silent the Palace appears, all
shuttered as if it were a house of the dead! Somehow it reminds me of
Mayence himself. I had pictured him occupying a house of gloom like
that."

"Do you think we are in any danger?" asked the girl. "The people seem
very boisterous."

"Oh, no danger at all. This mob is in the greatest good-humor. Listen to
their heart-stirring cheers! The people have been fed; that is the
reason of it."

"Is that why they cheer? It sounds to me like an ovation to the
Archbishop! Listen to them: 'Long live Mayence! God bless the
Archbishop!' There is no terror in those shouts."

Nevertheless his Lordship of Mayence had taken every precaution. The
shutters of his Palace were tightly closed, and along the whole front of
the edifice a double line of soldiers was ranged under the silent
command of their officers. They stood still and stiffly as stone-graven
statues in front of a Cathedral. The cheers rang unceasingly. Then,
suddenly, as if the sinister Palace opened one eye, shutters were turned
away from a great window giving upon the portico above the door. The
window itself was then thrown wide. Cheering ceased, and in the new
silence, from out the darkness there stepped with great dignity an old
man, gorgeous in his long robes of office, and surmounting that splendid
intellectual head reste