A sovereign, however, he was; and Paulina was well aware that in his own states he had the power of life and death. She had good reason to see that her own death was resolved on; still she neglected no means of honorable self-defence. In a tone of mingled sweetness and dignity she maintained her innocence of all that was alleged against her; protested that she was unacquainted with the tenor of any papers which might have been found in her trunks; and claimed her privilege, as a subject of the emperor, in bar of all right on the Landgrave's part to call her to account. These pleas were overruled, and when she further acquainted the court that she was a near relative of the emperor's, and ventured to hint at the vengeance with which his imperial majesty would not fail to visit so bloody a contempt of justice, she was surprised to find this menace treated with mockery and laughter. In reality, the long habit of fighting for and against all the princes of Germany had given to the Croatian general a disregard for any of them, except on the single consideration of receiving his pay at the moment; and a single circumstance, unknown to Paulina, in the final determination of the Landgrave, to earn a merit with his Swedish allies by breaking off all terms of reserve and compromise with the imperial court, impressed a savage desperation on the tone of that prince's policy at this particular time. The Landgrave had resolved to stake his all upon a single throw. A battle was now expected, which, if favorable to the Swedes, would lay open the road to Vienna. The Landgrave was prepared to abide the issue; not, perhaps, wholly uninfluenced to so extreme a course by the very paper which had been robbed from Paulina. His policy was known to his agents, and conspicuously influenced their manner of receiving her menace. Menaces, they informed her, came with better grace from those who had the power to enforce them; and, with a brutal scoff, the Croatian bade her merit their indulgence by frank discoveries and voluntary confessions. He insisted on knowing the nature of the connection which the imperial colonel of horse, Maximilian, had maintained with the students of Klosterheim; and upon other discoveries, with respect to most of which Paulina was too imperfectly informed herself to be capable of giving any light. Her earnest declarations to this effect were treated with disregard. She was dismissed for the present, but with an intimation that on the morrow she must prepare herself with a more complying temper, or with a sort of firmness in maintaining her resolution, which would not, perhaps, long resist those means which the law had placed at their disposal for dealing with the refractory and obstinate. CHAPTER XXIII.