"Heaven reward you for these words, my dear uncle," exclaimed Tausdorf joyfully, grasping the old knight's hand, when Netz burst in, the little Henry in his arms, and setting him between the lovers, on the ground, cried, "Stand here, boy, and decide: your mother is going to marry again; whom would you like to have for your father-in-law?" With a loud cry of joy the child sprang up to Tausdorf, and clasped his knees, looking up to him with a sweet smile of affection. "My son!" exclaimed Tausdorf, in emotion; and he lifted up the little one in his arms, and kissed him warmly. "Then join your mother's hand with his," continued Netz.--The boy stretched out his 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."