The Dove in the Eagles Nest | Page 6

at him over his
shoulder. Time and place are given in the notes for all these escapes.
After some twenty adventures Furwitz is beaten off, and Umfallo tries
his powers. Here the misadventures do not involve so much folly on the
hero's part-- though, to be sure, he ventures into a lion's den unarmed,
and has to beat off the inmates with a shovel. But the other adventures
are more rational. He catches a jester--of admirably foolish expression-
-putting a match to a powder-magazine; he is wonderfully preserved in
mountain avalanches and hurricanes; reins up his horse on the verge of
an abyss; falls through ice in Holland and shows nothing but his head
above it; cures himself of a fever by draughts of water, to the great
disgust of his physicians, and escapes a fire bursting out of a tall stove.
Neidelhard brings his real battles and perils. From this last he is in
danger of shipwreck, of assassination, of poison, in single combat, or in
battle; tumults of the people beset him; he is imprisoned as at Ghent.
But finally Neidelhard is beaten back; and the hero is presented to
Ehrenreich. Ehrenhold recounts his triumphs, and accuses the three
captains. One is hung, another beheaded, the third thrown headlong
from a tower, and a guardian angel then summons Theurdank to his
union with his Queen. No doubt this reunion was the life-dream of the
harassed, busy, inconsistent man, who flashed through the turmoils of
the early sixteenth century.
The adventures of Maximilian which have been adverted to in the story
are all to be found in Theurdank, and in his early life he was probably
the brilliant eager person we have tried in some degree to describe. In
his latter years it is well known that he was much struck by Luther's
arguments; and, indeed, he had long been conscious of need of Church
reform, though his plans took the grotesque form of getting himself
made Pope, and taking all into his own hands.
Perhaps it was unwise to have ever so faintly sketched Ebbo's career
through the ensuing troubles; but the history of the star and of the spark
in the stubble seemed to need completion; and the working out of the
character of the survivor was unfinished till his course had been
thought over from the dawn of the Wittenberg teaching, which must
have seemed no novelty to an heir of the doctrine of Tauler, and of the

veritably Catholic divines of old times. The idea is of the supposed
course of a thoughtful, refined, conscientious man through the earlier
times of the Reformation, glad of the hope of cleansing the Church, but
hoping to cleanse, not to break away from her--a hope that Luther
himself long cherished, and which was not entirely frustrated till the
re-assembly at Trent in the next generation. Justice has never been done
to the men who feared to loose their hold on the Church Catholic as the
one body to which the promises were made. Their loyalty has been
treated as blindness, timidity, or superstition; but that there were many
such persons, and those among the very highest minds of their time, no
one can have any doubt after reading such lives as those of Friedrich
the Wise of Saxony, of Erasmus, of Vittoria Colonna, or of Cardinal
Giustiniani.
April 9, 1836.

CHAPTER I
: MASTER GOTTFRIED'S WORKSHOP

The upper lattices of a tall, narrow window were open, and admitted
the view, of first some richly-tinted vine leaves and purpling grapes,
then, in dazzling freshness of new white stone, the lacework fabric of a
half-built minster spire, with a mason's crane on the summit, bending as
though craving for a further supply of materials; and beyond, peeping
through every crevice of the exquisite open fretwork, was the intensely
blue sky of early autumn.
The lower longer panes of the window were closed, and the glass,
divided into circles and quarrels, made the scene less distinct; but still
the huge stone tower was traceable, and, farther off, the slope of a
gently-rising hill, clothed with vineyards blushing into autumn richness.
Below, the view was closed by the gray wall of a court- yard, laden
with fruit-trees in full bearing, and inclosing paved paths that radiated
from a central fountain, and left spaces between, where a few summer
flowers still lingered, and the remains of others showed what their past
glory had been.
The interior of the room was wainscoted, the floor paved with bright
red and cream-coloured tiles, and the tall stove in one corner decorated

with the same. The eastern end of the apartment was adorned with an
exquisite small group carved in oak, representing the carpenter's shop
at Nazareth, with the Holy Child instructed by Joseph in the use