court that she was a near
relative of the Emperor's, and ventured to hint at the vengeance with which his
Imperial Majesty would not fail to visit so bloody a contempt of justice, she
was surprised to find this menace treated with mockery and laughter. In reality,
the long habit of fighting for and against all the Princes of Germany had given
to the Croatian general a disregard for any of them, except on the single
consideration of receiving his pay at the moment; and a single circumstance
unknown to Paulina, in the final determination of the Landgrave to earn a merit
with his Swedish allies by breaking off all terms of reserve or compromise with
the Imperial court, impressed a savage desperation on the tone of that Prince's
policy at this particular time. The Landgrave had resolved to stake his all upon
a single throw. A battle was now expected, which, if favourable to the Swedes,
would lay open the road to Vienna. The Landgrave was prepared to abide the
issue; not, perhaps, wholly uninfluenced to so extreme a course by the very
paper which had been robbed from Paulina. His policy was known to his agents,
and conspicuously influenced their manner of receiving her menace.
    Menaces, they informed her, came with better grace from those who had the
power to enforce them; and with a brutal scoff the Croatian bade her merit their
indulgence by frank discoveries and voluntary confessions. He insisted on
knowing the nature of the connexion which the Imperial Colonel of horse,
Maximilian, had maintained with the students of Klosterheim; and upon other
discoveries, with respect to most of which Paulina was too imperfectly informed
herself to be capable of giving any light. Her earnest declarations to this
effect were treated with disregard. She was dismissed for the present, but with
an intimation that on the morrow she must prepare herself with a more complying
temper, or with a sort of firmness in maintaining her resolution, which would
not perhaps long resist those means which the law had placed at their disposal
for dealing with the refractory and obstinate.
 

                                  Chapter XXIV

Paulina meditated earnestly upon the import of this parting threat. The more she
considered it, the less could she doubt that these fierce inquisitors had meant
to threaten her with torture. She felt the whole indignity of such a threat,
though she could hardly bring herself to believe them in earnest.
    On the following morning she was summoned early before her judges. They had
not yet assembled; but some of the lower officials were pacing up and down,
exchanging unintelligible jokes, looking sometimes at herself, sometimes at an
iron machine, with a complex arrangement of