burned with the fire and ambition of youth; while I, reaching well
toward my threescore years, had almost outlived the lust for strife. Max
longed to spread his wings, but the conditions of his birth held him
chained to the rocks of Styria, on the pinnacle of his family's empty
greatness.

Perched among the mountain crags, our castle was almost impregnable; but
that was its only virtue as a dwelling-place. Bare walls, stone floors,
sour wine, coarse boar's meat, brown bread, and poor beds constituted
our meagre portion.

Duke Frederick was poor because his people were poor. They lived among
the rocks and crags, raised their goats, ploughed their tiny patches of
thin earth, and gave to the duke and to each man his due. They were
simple, bigoted, and honest to the heart's core.

Though of mean fortune, Duke Frederick was the head of the great House
of Hapsburg, whose founders lived in the morning mists of European
history and dwelt proudly amid the peaks of their mountain home. Our
castle in Styria was not the original Castle Hapsburg. That was built
centuries before the time of this story, among the hawks' crags of
Aargau in Switzerland. It was lost by the House of Hapsburg many years
before Max was born. The castle in Styria was its namesake.

To leaven the poor loaf of life in Castle Hapsburg, its inmates enjoyed
the companionship of the kindest man and woman that ever graced a high
estate--the Duke and Duchess of Styria. Though in their little court,
life was rigid with the starch of ceremony, it was softened by the
tenderness of love. All that Duke Frederick asked from his subjects was
a bare livelihood and a strict observance of ceremonious conventions.