charmed by some secret spells, and consecrated from intrusion. For the
great tempest had often swept directly upon them, and yet still had
wheeled off, summoned away by some momentary call, to some remoter
attraction. But now at length all things portended that, if the war
should revive in strength after this brief suspension, it would fall
with accumulated weight upon this yet unravaged district.

This was the anticipation which had governed the Landgrave's policy in
so sternly and barbarously interfering with the generous purposes of
the Klosterheimers, for carrying over a safe-conduct to their friends
and visitors, when standing on the margin of the forest. The robber
Holkerstein, if not expressly countenanced by the Swedes, and secretly
nursed up to his present strength by Richelieu, was at any rate
embarked upon a system of aggression which would probably terminate in
connecting him with one or other of those authentic powers. In any
case, he stood committed to a course of continued offence upon the
imperial interests; since in that quarter his injuries and insults were
already past forgiveness. The interest of Holkerstein, then, ran in the
same channel with that of the Landgrave. It was impolitic to weaken
him. It was doubly impolitic to weaken him by a measure which must also
weaken the Landgrave; for any deduction from his own military force, or
from the means of recruiting it, was in that proportion a voluntary
sacrifice of the weight he should obtain with the Swedes on making the
junction, which he now firmly counted on, with their forces. But a
result which he still more dreaded from the cooperation of the
Klosterheimers with the caravan from Vienna, was the probable overthrow
of that supremacy in the city, which even now was so nicely balanced in
his favor that a slight reinforcement to the other side would turn the
scale against him.