Joyfully, then, she went forth to meet her. Outside on the gallery torches burned. The great courtyard was full of light and movement, the stamping of horses, the shouting of orders, snatches of laughter and song. She heard a whisper from Ludwig: “May I be your escort, Lady Mother?” and answered with a pressure of the hand. A groom brought her horse, and Ludwig lifted her from the mounting-stone at the bottom of the staircase, on to the bench-like seat, which, for the ladies of the thirteenth century, took the place of a saddle. Her husband and Hermann were already mounted; Ludwig, as his mother’s chosen squire, was at her horse’s head. So they rode, with a long train of knights, and ladies, and squires, and pages, behind them, out of the great court into the Vorburg, and then through the triple gates of the entrance tower, out over the lowered drawbridge, and so to the narrow and dangerous path which led to the plain below. So narrow was the path that they could but ride in single file with a torch-bearer beside each rider to light the way for them. In the depths below them, Eisenach lay, a great blazing jewel in the dark valley. All sorts of summer-night scents came to them from the sloping woods on either side. There was no darkness in the sky, only a deep blue, cut by exquisite star-forms. In the west was a thin curve of a very young moon. Landgraf Hermann began to hum a “Lied” of Walther’s, the “Praise of Summer”—“Swie wol der heide ir manicvaltiu varwe stât,” “How well the painted heath becomes its wealth of summer bloom”—and presently a boy’s soprano took it up, and to wood, and heath, and meadow were being revealed their own sweet loveliness, under the tender light of a poet’s longing, wistful yet passionless, like that of the thin young moon herself! So those rode down from the Wartburg, who went forth from it to meet the King’s Daughter. The gates of Eisenach opened to their trumpeter, and through the torch-lit streets they rode to the inn beside Saint George’s Gate, where Michael Hellgreff had had Klingsohr to guest, what time he saw the Star hang low in the mystic East. On their way, they passed groups of burghers and their dames, all in their Sunday best, sitting on benches under the overhanging stories of their gabled, wooden houses, who left off gossiping to cheer their Sovereigns and the handsome young bridegroom. Under the linden on the green, country lads and lasses, in the fine clothes which raised Neidhart’s bile, were dancing a merry “Springtanz,” to the infinite delight of the Court Pages and the dainty scorn of the Court Ladies. They shouted their “Heil” as the Ducal pair passed, but never lost a step. The market-place was almost impassable, so dense were the throngs that crowded round the roasting ox, and the fountain that played wine.