"We are strangers, father," was the answer, "from a distant country, and belonging to the army which has passed hither upon pilgrimage; one object brings us here in common, we hope, with all that host. We desire to pay our devotions where the great ransom was paid for us, and to free, by our good swords, enslaved Palestine, from the usurpation and tyranny of the infidel. When we have said this, we have announced our highest human motive. Yet Robert of Paris and his Countess would not willingly set their foot on a land, save what should resound its echo. They have not been accustomed to move in silence upon the face of the earth, and they would purchase an eternal life of fame, though it were at the price of mortal existence." "You seek, then, to barter safety for fame," said Agelastes, "though you may, perchance, throw death into the scale by which you hope to gain it?" "Assuredly," said Count Robert; "nor is there one wearing such a belt as this, to whom such a thought is stranger." "And as I understand," said Agelastes, "your lady shares with your honourable self in these valorous resolutions?--Can this be?" "You may undervalue my female courage, father, if such is your will," said the Countess; "but I speak in presence of a witness who can attest the truth, when I say that a man of half your years had not doubted the truth with impunity." "Nay, Heaven protect me from the lightning of your eyes," said Agelastes, "whether in anger or in scorn. I bear an aegis about myself against what I should else have feared. But age, with its incapacities, brings also its apologies. Perhaps, indeed, it is one like me whom you seek to find, and in that case I should be happy to render to you such services as it is my duty to offer to all worthy knights." "I have already said," replied Count Robert, "that after the accomplishment of my vow,"--he looked upwards and crossed himself,--"there is nothing on earth to which I am more bound than to celebrate my name in arms as becomes a valiant cavalier. When men die obscurely, they die for ever. Had my ancestor Charles never left the paltry banks of the Saale, he had not now been much better known than any vine-dresser who wielded his pruning-hook in the same territories. But he bore him like a brave man, and his name is deathless in the memory of the worthy."