eited, and he in his
graciousness, and in consequence of many a memory which he, too, holds
dear, would gladly show you again."

This letter bore the signature of Don Luis Quijada, and had been written
by a poor German copyist, a wretched, cross-eyed fellow, whom Wolf had
pointed out to her, and whose hand Barbara knew. From his pen also came
the sentence under the major-domo's name, "The Golden Cross must be
vacated during the month of April."

When Barbara had read these imperial decisions for the second and the
third time, and fully realized the meaning of every word, she clinched
her teeth and gazed steadily into vacancy for a while. Then she laughed
in such a shrill, hoarse tone that she was startled at the sound of her
own voice, and paced up and down the room with long strides.

Should she reject what the most powerful and wealthy sovereign in the
world offered with contemptible parsimony? No! It was not much, but it
would suffice for her support, and the additional gift was large enough
to afford her father a great pleasure when he came home.

Pyramus Kogel's last letter reported that his condition was improving.
Perhaps he might soon return. Then the money would enable her to weave
a joy into the sorrow that awaited him. It had always been a humiliating
thought that he had lost his own house and was obliged to live in a
hired one, and at least she could free him from that.

It was evident enough that her pitiful allowance did not proceed from
the Emperor's avarice; Charles only wished to force her to obey his wish
to shut her for the rest of her life in a cloister. The mother of his
son must remain concealed from the world; he desired to spare him in
after years the embarrassment of meeting the woman whose birth was so
much more humble than his own and his father's. Want should drive her
from the world, and, to hasten her flight, the shrewd adept in reading
human nature showed her in the distance the abbess's cross, and tried
thereby to arouse her ambition.

But in her childhood and youth Barbara had been accustomed to still
plainer living than she could grant herself in future, and she would
have been miserable in the most magnificent palace if she had been
compelled to relinquish her independence. Rather death in the Danube
than to dispense with it!

She was young, healthy, and vigorous, and it seemed like voluntary
mutilation to resign her liberty at twenty-one. But even had she felt
the need of the