If his attention had been entirely absorbed by the reading of these
tomes, he might have become a mere dreamy bookworm, his intellect
saturated with the sentimental and romantic mysticism permeating Germany
even unto this day, and, as he cared nothing for the sports of boyhood,
body might have suffered as brain developed.

But, luckily, he had been placed under the instruction of Rinaldo, the
greatest master of the sword that the world had up to that period
produced. Rinaldo was an Italian from Milan, whom gold tempted across
the Alps for the purpose of instructing the Emperor's son in Frankfort.
He was a man of grace and politeness, and young Roland took to him from
the first, exhibiting such aptitude in the art of fencing that the
Italian was not only proud of one who did such credit to his tuition,
but came to love the youth as if he were his own son.

For the sword-making of Germany the Italian expressed the utmost
contempt. The coarse weapons produced by the ironworkers of Frankfort
needed strength rather than skill in their manipulation. Between the
Italian method and the German was all the contrast that exists between
the catching of salmon with a delicate line and a gossamer fly, or
clubbing the fish to death as did the boatmen at that fishery called the
Waag down the Rhine by St. Goar.

Roland listened intently and without defense to the diatribe against his
country's weapons and the clumsy method of using them, but although he
said nothing, he formed opinions of his own, believing there was some
merit in strength which the Italian ignored; so, studying the subject,
he himself invented a sword which, while lacking the stoutness of the
German weapon, retained some of its stability, and was almost as easily
handled as the Italian rapier, without the disadvantage of its extreme