“Thank you, count, thank you most cordially.  You know well, however, that the master’s business is before all things else.  My imperial master awaits me at Regensburg, and I shall then have the honor of being permitted to accompany him to Vienna.  His Imperial Majesty is a strict and punctilious lord, and has calculated to the very day and hour when I may again reach the imperial palace.  For our interview here he allowed me one hour; and, lo! the cock of your great wall clock had just stepped out and crowed eleven as I entered your room, and is already here, crowing twelve as loud as he can.  It is therefore time for me to depart.  I have briefly made you acquainted with the Emperor’s intentions and desires, and your wise and fertile brain will know how to enlarge and construe.  Farewell, Sir Stadtholder in the Mark, farewell, and may every blessing attend you!”

Count Lesle had risen and drawn his fur cap once more far over his brow.  Schwarzenberg assisted him to don his ample and heavy wrappings, and then escorted him to the door.

“Permit me at least to conduct you to your carriage, Count Lesle,” he said.

“Impossible, count; that would excite remark among your people, and give rise to conjectures on all sides.  I gave myself out on entering as one of your officials from Sonnenburg, and your dignity does not suffer you to act toward your officials as toward an equal.  Farewell, then!”

Count Lesle stepped out briskly, and hurriedly closed the palace door.  Schwarzenberg stood listening to the retreating footsteps of the imperial legate until they died away in the long corridor.  Then he slowly turned away and sank with a sigh into the armchair which Count Lesle had recently occupied.

“Strange tidings those,” he muttered to himself.  “I must now then adopt a wholly different line of action—­must derange and newly model all my plans.  What I would altogether avoid I must now do—­must recall the Electoral Prince; must yield to him the precedence at court, both in rank and position; must—­” All at once he started up and shrank, as if a sudden flash of lightning had interrupted his train of thought.  “If it must be,” he said quite softly to himself, “if nothing else is left for me, and I see myself in danger, then I will do it.  I shall resort to this last expedient.”

But even while he pronounced the words he grew pale and cast around him a timid, anxious glance, as if he dreaded being overheard by some traitorous ear.  Then he leaned his head upon the back of the armchair, and sat, long, silent, and motionless, wholly absorbed in deep and earnest thought.

“Yes, it shall be so,” he said at last.  “He must leave The Hague; but it does not signify necessarily that he will arrive here so soon.  The way is long, the roads are unsafe, and he must travel cautiously and circumspectly, for many cutthroats wander about, and who knows whether the Swedes may not make the attempt to capture and carry off the young Prince, or murder him, that he may not some day contest with them the possession of Pomerania.  All this must, indeed, be risked; then—­Master Gabriel Nietzel must nevertheless still go to The Hague; only I shall give him other instructions, and he will have a wholly different errand to fulfill.  Yes, yes, it shall be so; I shall have him summoned directly.”