A friend such as he needed, not to speak of ten friends, must be told everything. One cannot ask a friend to aid one in carrying off a king's daughter without telling him what the dangers are. Rapidly he told off the officers he knew in Ratisbon. All were in the pay of the Emperor or the Elector. At the mention of either the shoulders would go up, there would be long draughts of beer, a cloud of smoke, pursed-up brows, and "Not to be thought of, my friend!" They were trusty fellows for the most part, would not betray his confidence, but neither would they throw themselves whole-heartedly into an enterprise which, successful, would bring to some certain death, and to the rest a very intangible reward, and failing would involve all in equal ruin.
Then again there were the Jesuits. Which of his trusty friends might not be Jesuits, if not, like his remaining aide-de-camp, a regular priest in an officer's uniform, then an officer, drawing Jesuit pay as well as the Emperor's?
He thought of the Emperor with his proud, cold, supercilious face. There was as little reason for hope of forgiveness as there was hope of consent from him. From the Emperor he passed to Maximilian, the prince who should have been a Jesuit, as he was the foster-child of Jesuitism. Of a lineage as proud as that of the Habsburgs, of a renown for policy as for valour, ruler of some of the fairest provinces and greatest cities of the Empire, he would of a surety in his love be as relentless an adversary as fate. Men of his dark complexion take the malady of love not lightly. Least of all men, being who he was, would he be pitiful. Brook a rival, once disclosed to him, in a Scots mercenary, were he Wallace Wight himself? As well might the Danube cease to flow eastward, ever eastward. And behind, but peering between these two haughty and melancholy faces in Nigel's thought, was Father Lamormain's gentle, suave, and smiling countenance, from whose mouth had flowed persuasive speech that clothed the stern resolved marching orders of that sinister brotherhood in whom there was no shadow of turning. Into no conceivable scheme of Father Lamormain's could fit any idea of the marriage of Nigel with the Archduchess. He had shown himself favourable to the Elector's suit. Nigel's service to the Emperor would not count for aught if he should stand in the way of the Jesuit advance.