prisoners were in one night all
released. In half an hour the news ran over the town and the university;
multitudes hastened to the college, anxious to congratulate the prisoners on
their deliverance from the double afflictions of a dungeon and of continual
insecurity. Mere curiosity also prompted some, who took but little interest in
the prisoners or their cause, to inquire into the circumstances of so abrupt and
unexpected an act of grace. One principal court in the college was filled with
those who had come upon this errand of friendly interest or curiosity. Nothing
was to be seen but earnest and delighted faces, offering or acknowledging
congratulation; nothing to be heard but the language of joy and pleasure -
friendly or affectionate, according to the sex or relation of the speaker. Some
were talking of procuring passports for leaving the town - some anticipating
that this course would not be left to their own choice, but imposed, as the
price of his clemency, by the Landgrave; - all in short was hubbub and joyous
uproar, when suddenly a file of the city guard, commanded by an officer, made
their way rudely and violently through the crowd, advancing evidently to the
spot where the liberated prisoners were collected in a group. At that moment the
Count St. Aldenheim was offering his congratulations. The friends to whom he
spoke were too confident in his honour and integrity to have felt even one
moment's misgiving upon the true causes which had sheltered him from the
Landgrave's wrath, and had thus given him a privilege so invidious in the eyes
of those who knew him not, and on that account so hateful in his own. They knew
his unimpeachable fidelity to the cause and themselves, and were anxiously
expressing their sense of it by the warmth of their salutations at the very
moment when the city guard appeared. The Count, on his part, was gaily reminding
them to come that evening and fulfil their engagement to drink his aunt of
jovial memory in her own Johannisberg, when the guard, shouldering aside the
crowd, advanced, and, surrounding the group of students, in an instant laid the
hands of summary arrest each upon the gentleman who stood next him. The petty
officer who commanded made a grasp at one of the most distinguished in dress,
and seized rudely upon the gold chain depending from his neck. St. Aldenheim,
who happened at the moment to be in conversation with this individual, stung
with a sudden indignation at the ruffian eagerness of the men in thus abusing
the privileges of their office, and unable to control the generous ardour of his
nature, met this brutal outrage with a