is hand after Althea's, and said, in a sweet soothing
tone, "Dear mother!"--She remained, however, timidly at the window, and
did not move; upon this Tausdorf carried to her the little Henry, who
seized her arm with gentle violence, and joined the feebly-resisting
hand with the extended right-hand of the lover, at the same time
exclaiming, "Always so! always so!" and covering the two hands with
kisses.

"My Henry!" stammered Althea, and inclined her face to his.

"Is he not _our_ Henry?" asked Tausdorf, hastily putting down the
child, and with his arms clasping the tender body of Althea.

"In the name of Heaven!" she replied, scarcely audible, while his lips
sank upon hers.

"What Heaven does is well done!" said the old Schindel, with folded
hands.

Netz shouted out aloud, "_Victoria!_"--In the next moment he passed his
mailed hand across his eyes, and, unmanned by keen and sudden agony,
rushed out of the apartment.

* * * * *

Eight days after the Whitsuntide of the same year, the morning twilight
lit up the horizon with a dusky red, and painted with blood the walls
of the Hildebrand, in which Francis was still quietly slumbering on his
couch. Before him stood the old Heidenreich, who seized his hand, and
called upon his name to wake him. At the call he started up wildly, and
inquired peevishly and sleepily why the old man disturbed him at such
an hour? "Sleep is precisely the best thing that one can enjoy in a
dungeon."

"I bring you weighty, and in some sort pleasant, news. That I come with
it thus early is to prepare you for the events of the morning.
Yesterday arrived the emperor's final sentence--your life is saved. The
imprisonment which you have already suffered will be reckoned in part
of your incurred penance; and, _mense Septembris anni currentis_, you
may expect your freedom."

"Am I to rot then so long in a dungeon? That is an unjust severity, as
I neither confessed the fact, nor have been convicted of it; and one
may easily see that the emperor deems himself the first nobleman in the
principality, by his siding thus with the lordlings."

"Not yet contented? Thank God, on the contrary, that the sentence has
turned out so exceedingly mild. I can assure you, when the sentence was
read in the sessions-room, the impertinent alderman, Treutler,
observed, _Dat veniam corvis vexat censura columbas!_ You were heavily
accused: had not Onophrius been silent on the rack, had n