While the duke was thus pondering, Henry had embraced his father and sister, and leaped upon his horse.

Rodolph mounted slowly, after examining the girths with his own hand; and the little troop, waving a parting salute, swept over the drawbridge, and were soon lost among the trees.
About the same hour, or a little earlier, the Lord of Hers, with a small retinue, had set out in an opposite direction, but on the same mission.
Rodolph had long seen that King Henry's unprincipled ambition threatened the liberties of religion and of Austria, and he only paused for the Papal excommunication to throw off all allegiance to a monarch who could not be safely trusted.

That excommunication was impending, and, as may be easily conjectured, the duke was making a rapid circuit of his dominions, to unite his barons more closely to his interests; to warn them to prepare for the approaching struggle; to confirm the weak and wavering in their fidelity; inspire the resolves of those who were true and firm, and make all the pulses of the circle of Suabia throb in concert to the action of one grand moving power.

To gain time, the Lord of Hers had been despatched to the provinces bordering upon the Rhine with letters from Rodolph to the principal barons there, while the duke himself, with Henry of Stramen, followed the Danube.
For many months there had been no active warfare between the hostile houses, though the feud had lost none of its venom.

But age was stiffening the impetuosity of the old barons; and their sons, no longer urged on by the battle-cry of their sires, listened with more attention to the advice and representations of their spiritual instructors.
Gilbert of Hers was not inclined to take an injury to his breast, and hug it there; but the bold and frequent incursions of Henry of Stramen had induced him to retaliate rather in a spirit of rivalry than of revenge.