oy, but a fierce torrent of new wishes constantly surpassing one
another. With their boundless extent they had of necessity remained
unfulfilled. Thus woe on woe, and at the same time the painfully
paralyzing feeling of the hostility of Fate had been evoked from its
surges and, instead of happiness, they had brought sorrow and suffering.

Pride in such a son had been the delight of her life; henceforth, she
felt it, she must seek her happiness, her joys, elsewhere, and she
knew also where, and realized that she was receiving higher for smaller
things. Instead of sharing his renown, she had gained the right to share
his misfortune and his griefs.

The more and the more eagerly she pondered in silence, the more surely
she perceived that earthly glory and magnificence, which she had
thought the greatest blessings, were only a series of sunbeams, swiftly
following one another, which would be clouded by one shadow after the
other until darkness and oblivion ingulfed them.

Like every outward splendour, fame dazzles the eyes of men. It would dim
her son's--she knew it now--whether he looked backward to the past or
forward to the future. The greatness he had gained he overlooked; what
awaited him in the future, having lost his clearness of vision and
impartiality, he was disposed to overvalue.

From her eyes, on the contrary, this knowledge removed veil after veil.

It was a vain delusion which led him to the belief that the Scottish
and English crowns possessed the power to render him happy, and end his
struggle for new and higher honours; for royalty also belonged to the
glory whose worthlessness she now perceived as plainly as the reflection
of her own face in the surface of the mirror.

Barbara saw her son for only a few more fleeting hours; the "Spanish
fury" which destroyed the flower of Antwerp doubled his business cares,
forbade any delay, and imperiously claimed his whole time and strength.

The mother watched his honest labours sorrowfully. She knew that the
chivalrous champion of the faith, the sincere enthusiast, to whom
nothing was higher than honour and the stainless purity of his name,
must succumb to his most eminent foe, the Prince of Orange, with his
tireless, inventive, thoroughly statesmanlike intellect, which preserved
the power of seeing in the darkness, and did not shrink from deceit
where it would promote the great cause which she did not understand, but
to which he consecrated every drop of his h