CLYTIA A ROMANCE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY BY GEORGE TAYLOR Author of "Antinous." {7}u«@{[3@!}tec£¢c@ FROM THE GERMAN BY MARY J. SAFFORD NEW YORK WILLIAM S. GOTTSBERGER, PUBLISHER II MURRAY STREET Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1884 BY WILLIAM S. GOTTSBERGER in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington GIFT Press of William S. Gottsberger New York H4K62 1884 CLYTIA. CHAPTER I. WHILE, in the north of Germany, keen winds were blowing and chill night frosts kept the budding foliage from breaking into leaf, the valley of the Rhine, between Bergstrasse and Hardtgebirge, had enjoyed for several weeks the early Spring which is the great advantage of this garden of the country. Three hundred years ago, the period at which the scene of this story is laid, the valley of the Neckar, where it joins the lowlands of the Rhine, was ablaze with the red and white blossoms of the fruit-trees and yellow fields of sweet naphew, as if Spring had sought to try the effect of an illumination in broad daylight. True, the Jettenbühl above Heidelberg, now resembling a green velvet cushion on which the castle-ruins rest like a consecrated offering to Deity, was then a bare glacis, crowned by massive towers and fortification walls projecting in rectangular lines or obtuse angles, while the electoral castle of the palsgrave towered like a frowning fortress above the fertile valley of Heidelberg, as the gloomy papal citadel now dominates pleasant Avignon or threatening Ehrenbreitstein rises above the green Rhine. The superb castle of Frederick IV. and Frederick V. |