shing influence which, as he supposed, her sleep
had exerted upon her. In an hour he must part from the artist to whom he
owed so much pleasure, whose beauty warmed his aging heart, and who he
frequently wished might regain the wonderful gift now so cruelly lost.
Her fiery vivacity, her thoroughly natural, self-reliant unconcern, her
fresh enthusiasm, the joyousness and industry with which she toiled
at her own cultivation, and the gratitude with which any musical
instruction had been received, had endeared her to him. It would be a
pleasure to see her again, and a veritable banquet of the soul to hear
her sing in the old way.

He told her this with frank affection, and represented to her how much
better suited she was to Brussels than to her stately but dull and quiet
Ratisbon.

With enthusiastic love for his native land, he described the bustling
life in his beautiful, wealthy home. There music and every art
flourished; there, besides the Emperor and his august sister, were
great nobles who with cheerful lavishness patronized everything that was
beautiful and worthy of esteem; thither flocked strangers from the
whole world; there festivals were celebrated with a magnificence and
joyousness witnessed nowhere else on earth. There was the abode of
freedom, joy, and mirth.

Barbara had often wished to see the Netherlands, which the Emperor
Charles also remembered with special affection, but no one had ever thus
transported her to the midst of these flourishing provinces and this
blithesome people.

During the maestro's description her large eyes rested upon his lips as
if spellbound. She, too, must see this Brabant, and, like every newly
awakened longing, this also quickly took possession of her whole
nature. Only in the Netherlands, she thought, could she regain her lost
happiness. But what elevated this idea to a certainty in her mind was
not only the fostering of music, the spectacles and festivals, the
magnificent velvet, the rustling silk, and the gay, varied life, not
only the worthy Appenzelder and the friend at her side, but, far above
all other things, the circumstance that Brussels was the home of the
Emperor Charles, that there, there alone, she might be permitted to see
again and again, at least from a distance, the man whom she hated.

Absorbed in the Netherlands, she forgot to notice the nearest things
which presented themselves to her gaze.

The last hour of the drive had passed with the speed of an