The knight having emptied the cup by a long draught, ordered it to be filled again, and presented it to Albert. "Does not this wine," asked Albert, "grow about the castle whence Würtemberg's royal blood sprang? I think the heights about it are called Uhlbacher?" "You are right," answered the exile; "the hill is generally called the Rothenberg, at the foot of which the vine grows; the castle stands upon its summit, built by Würtemberg's ancestors. Oh! the beautiful vallies of the Neckar, the luxuriant hills of fruit and wine! Gone, gone for ever!" He uttered these words with a voice which bespoke a heart almost broken by suffering and grief; he could scarcely conceal the anguish of his soul, which his inflexible mind had hitherto veiled under the mask of a forced hilarity. The countryman knelt beside him, took his hand, and to rouse him from a state of painful wandering, in which he was lost for some moments, said, "Be of good cheer, sir; you will return to your country again happier than you left it." "You will behold the vallies of your home again," said Albert. "When the Duke regains his lost rights, and reoccupies the castles of his ancestors, the vallies of the Neckar, and its richly clothed hills of vineyards, will echo with the rejoicings of his people, and you also will be able to join in the jubilee. Banish gloomy thoughts from your mind, _nunc vino pellite curas_; drink, and let us hope for better times. I pledge you in this Würtemberg wine,--'to the Duke's happy return with his faithful followers!'" These words seemed to reanimate the sunken spirits of the knight, and like a ray of sunshine shed a smile over his features. "Yes!" he cried, "sweet is the word which sends comfort to the broken-hearted; it is like a drop of cold water to refresh the weary wanderer in the desert. Forget my weakness, my friend; pardon it in a man who otherwise never gives place to grief. "But if you had ever looked down from the summit of the Rothenberg, shaded by its green woods, into the heart of Würtemberg, and beheld the gentle stream of the Neckar winding its course along its richly cultivated banks; with its fields of high standing corn waving in the breeze; the red roofs of its villages peeping out from a forest of fruit trees, with their industrious inhabitants, consisting of strong men and beautiful women, busily employed in their gardens or dressing their vines on the heights; had you surveyed all this, and with my eyes, and then been compelled to take refuge from the bloodthirsty hands of ruffians in these inhospitable regions, surrounded by the benumbing chill of these walls, outlawed, condemned, banished.--Oh! the thought is terrible! too overwhelming for man's heart to bear!"