sess a fresh charm for him.

No wonder!

The singer understood how to produce a new effect each time by means of
wonderful gradations of expression in the comprehension and execution.

Once she had also succeeded in cheering her lover with Perissone
Cambio's merry singing lesson on the 'ut re mi fa sol', and again with
Willaert's laughing song, "Sempre mi ridesta."

Two days later there had again been a great deal of laughing because
Barbara undertook to sing to his Majesty another almost recklessly
merry song by the same composer. The marquise knew it, and declared that
Barbara's style and voice did not suit such things. She admitted that
her execution of serious, especially religious and solemn compositions,
was not amiss--nay, often it was wonderfully fine--but in such secular
tunes her real nature appeared too plainly, and the skilful singer
became a Bacchante.

It had been a sorry pleasure to her to watch the boisterous manner and
singing of this creature, who had been far too highly favoured by the
caprice of Fortune.

These reckless songs, unless she was mistaken, had also been by no means
pleasing to his Majesty. The light had fallen directly upon his face
just as she happened to glance up at the house from under the group of
lindens, and she had distinctly seen him angrily thrust out his
lower lip, which every one near his person knew was a sign of extreme
displeasure.

But the girl had gone beyond all bounds. Old as she was, she could not
help blushing at the mere thought of it. In her reckless mood she had
probably forgotten that she had drawn her imperial lover into her net
by arts of an entirely different nature. The almoner listened
incredulously, for in his youth the Emperor Charles had joined in the
wildest songs of the soldiery, and had well understood, on certain
occasions, how to be merry with the merry, laugh and carouse in a
Flemish tavern. After the confession the almoner heard things to which
he would gladly have shut his ears, though they proved that the time
which the marquise had spent at the French court had benefited her
powers of observation.

Three days before the Emperor, for the first time, had seriously found
fault with Barbara.

It had been impossible for the lady in waiting to discover the cause;
but what she knew certainly was that her lover's censure had roused
the girl to vehement contradiction, and that his Majesty, after a sharp
reply, had been on the point of leaving