Sitting at the table of the
Archduke, Conrade was at once stunned and amused with the clang
of Teutonic sounds assaulting his ears on all sides,
notwithstanding the solemnity of a princely banquet. Their dress
seemed equally fantastic to him, many of the Austrian nobles
retaining their long beards, and almost all of them wearing short
jerkins of various colours, cut, and flourished, and fringed in a
manner not common in Western Europe.
Numbers of dependants, old and young, attended in the pavilion,
mingled at times in the conversation, received from their masters
the relics of the entertainment, and devoured them as they stood
behind the backs of the company. Jesters, dwarfs, and minstrels
were there in unusual numbers, and more noisy and intrusive than
they were permitted to be in better regulated society. As they
were allowed to share freely in the wine, which flowed round in
large quantities, their licensed tumult was the more excessive.
All this while, and in the midst of a clamour and confusion which
would better have become a German tavern during a fair than the
tent of a sovereign prince, the Archduke was waited upon with a
minuteness of form and observance which showed how anxious he was
to maintain rigidly the state and character to which his
elevation had entitled him.
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