She was hardly pleased, but refused to abide with the horses, which we tethered a little back of the way. I ordered her, however, to walk the last, and she obeyed reluctantly, the more reluctantly as I strode first, beside the guiding Humfried. With every man’s weapon at hand, we forced through the underbrush. Luckily the ground was soft with rain. The fresh young twigs bent noiselessly. We attacked a party equal or superior to ourselves, but in that moment we would have gone against forty with full confidence. Suddenly we halted by a friendly thicket. Before us opened a little plat of greensward. Horses were tethered beside it. To the left the bushes sprang apart a little, giving a fair view of the Eisenach road. Here seated carelessly on the grass, was a villainously bearded sentry with one eye upon the highway, the other upon some pleasant pottage that was cooking in an iron pot over a snapping fire of sticks. The rest of Forli’s party lolled in easy attitudes around the blaze. His Eminence himself, rosy and portly, a trifle heavy-eyed perhaps from hard riding, but seemingly having borne his galloping exceedingly well, sat a little apart, propped up against a saddle, while before him with numerous airy gestures squatted the estimable Ettore Orosi, talking a voluble stream of Tuscan. “I do assure you, Eminenza, by my honor as a Christian and Catholic bravo”--so I caught the clapper of his tongue going--“that it was only the malific evil eye which that most damnable heretic cast over me, which thwarted my most admirably conceived attempt upon him at Worms; but that attack you will graciously recall, was made in the night time; while the learned and ingenious virtuoso Giuseppe Salvali of Bergamo assures us that wizards, though most potent under stars and moon, are correspondingly feeble in clear sunlight.” “_Si_,” assented the Cardinal dryly, “no doubt the valor of Signor Orosi is improved by a bright morning and plenty of armed friends. Ho there, fellow! Does a wagon seem to be coming down the road?” “Not a crow or hare is in sight,” answered the sentry. “Well said, unless your worthy watchman will deign to look the other way,” spoke I in Italian, emerging from the thicket as unwarned as a ghost. Forli leaped to his feet as men rise from adders’ nests. His eight gallows-birds clutched for their weapons, but I seemed utterly unconcerned. In my right hand I held only my blue riding cap. “A fair morning, your Christian Eminence,” I continued, shaking out my cloak with deliberation, while Forli for once looked abject and aghast. “And may I ask for what noble enterprise the Pope’s Legate watches the roads like a bandit in this our poor northern Thuringian country?” “How in the name of all fiends!--How, save by Ganymede’s eagle, came you here?” at length articulated the Cardinal, not forgetting his classics even in this crisis.