But now experience came to the merchant's aid. Only in romances did
princes of the blood royal wander about like troubadours. Even a member
of the lesser nobility did not call unheralded at the house of a
merchant. The aristocracy always wanted money, it is true, "but what
they thought they might require, they went and took," as witness the
piratical Barons of the Rhine, whose exactions brought misery on the
great city of Frankfort.

Then all at once came the clinching remembrance that when the Electors
were appealed to on behalf of the young Prince, the three Archbishops
had promptly seized his Royal Highness, and, in spite of the pleadings
of the Empress (the Emperor was drunk and indifferent) placed him in the
custody of the Archbishop nearest to Frankfort, the warrior prelate of
Mayence, who imprisoned him in the strong fortress of Ehrenfels, from
which, well guarded and isolated as it was upon a crag over-hanging the
Rhine, no man could escape.

"Will you kindly be seated again, sir," requested the merchant, and if
he had spoken a short time before, he would have put the phrase "your
Royal Highness" in the place of the word "sir."

Roland, after a moment's hesitation, sat down. He saw that his coup had
failed, because he was unable to back it up by proofs. His dramatic
action had been like a brilliant cavalry charge, for a moment
successful, but coming to naught because there was no solid infantry to
turn the temporary confusion of the enemy into complete rout. Realizing
that the battle must be fought over again, the Prince sat back with a
sigh of disappointment, a shade of discontent on his handsome face.

"I find myself in rather a quandary," proceeded the merchant. "If indeed