"Spare all this idle talk," cried Francis, "I'll find out a good place for myself;" and he carried his chair to the upper part of the room, seating himself between Tausdorf and Schindel, and saying to the former, "I see by your place near my cousin that you are the knight Tausdorf. I'm glad to have an opportunity of knowing you, for though I do not in general care much about the nobles, you please me well. There is a command and intelligence about you such as one does not usually see in your knights. For the rest, I am the wild Frank Friend, of whom no doubt you have heard all manner of stories, and more bad than good. In troth, I am a mad companion, but I mean it fairly with him who means it fairly with me, and I now heartily wish you joy of your marriage with my handsome cousin Althea here." Tausdorf returned a fitting compliment, while Schindel, who had got behind Althea's chair, whispered to her, "The bear does not seem in one of his worst bear-moods to-day. Heaven help us farther." In the mean time the second course was served up. Francis ate little, but stuck so much the more diligently to the wine, and kept up a constant talk with Tausdorf, in a tone of frank importunity, which did not sit amiss upon him. Soon the conversation turned upon the Turkish war; and he was ready to leap out of his skin for joy on finding that Tausdorf had served against the infidels in Transylvania, at the very time he had been fighting with them in Hungary. "Heaven confound me!" he cried, while his face glowed with drinking; and holding up the goblet--"Why, you please me better and better, comrade, and therefore we'll now pledge each other in a brave draught, and swear eternal friendship and brotherhood." Tausdorf hesitated at this unexpected proposal, and was about to decline it courteously, when Althea pressed his hand under the table, and in low brief words requested him to accede for her sake; upon which he took up the crystal goblet, and Francis did the same to pledge him; but in the moment that the glasses touched, both rang hollowly, and burst with a sharp jarring sound, which echoed lamentably through the wide hall, while the noble wine poured down in streams upon the floor, to the indignation of the avaricious Christopher, who called out, "You are, and always will be, Frank the clumsy, and do nothing like rational people; all with noise and fury. You have broken now my beautiful crystal cups with your rough pledging." "Yes, every thing is to be laid to me," growled Francis: "I pledged my goblet as neatly as possible; it was not till afterwards that both broke, and how that chanced, the devil only knows." "It is not your brother's fault," said Tausdorf, drying the wine from his doublet. "I do not myself understand how it happened."