It had never been
precisely known what was become of the young Duke Carl, who
disappeared from the world just a century before, about the time when
a great army passed over those parts, at a political crisis, one
result of which was the final absorption of his small territory in a
neighbouring dominion. Restless, romantic, eccentric, had he passed
on with the victorious host, and taken the chances of an obscure
soldier's life? Certain old letters hinted at a different ending--
love-letters which provided for a secret meeting, preliminary perhaps
to the final departure of the young Duke (who, by the usage of his
realm, could only with extreme difficulty go whither, or marry whom,
he pleased) to whatever worlds he had chosen, not of his own people.
The minds of those still interested in the matter were now at last
made up, the disposition of the remains suggesting to them the lively
picture of a sullen night, the unexpected passing of the great army,
[121] and the two lovers rushing forth wildly at the sudden tumult
outside their cheerful shelter, caught in the dark and trampled out
so, surprised and unseen, among the horses and heavy guns.
Time, at the court of the Grand-duke of Rosenmold, at the beginning
of the eighteenth century might seem to have been standing still
almost since the Middle Age--since the days of the Emperor Charles
the Fifth, at which period, by the marriage of the hereditary Grand-
duke with a princess of the Imperial house, a sudden tide of wealth,
flowing through the grand-ducal exchequer, had left a kind of golden
architectural splendour on the place, always too ample for its
population.
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