routed the Protestants. He himself announced his
great victory in the words, "I came, I saw, and God conquered."

When Pyramus told the news to his young wife, she answered quietly, "Who
could resist the mighty monarch!"

In Brussels she learned that the Emperor had taken the Elector of Saxony
captive on the battlefield, but the Landgrave of Hesse had been betrayed
into his power by a stratagem which the Protestants branded as base
treachery, and used to fill all Germany with the bitterest hatred
against him; but here Barbara's wrath flamed forth, and she upbraided
the slanderous heretics. It angered her to have the great sovereign
denied his due reverence in her own home; but secretly she believed in
the breach of faith.

CHAPTER X.

Three years passed.

Barbara occupied with her husband and the two sons she had given him a
pretty little house in the modest quarter of Saint-Gery in Brussels.

Here the capital of wealthy, flourishing Brabant certainly looked very
unlike what she had expected from Gombert's stories; and how little
share she had had hitherto in the splendour which on the drive to
Landshut she had expected to find in Brussels!

Since the musician had described the city, she had seen it distinctly
before her in her vivid imagination. The lower portion, intersected by
the river Senne and numerous canals, belonged to the rich, industrious
citizens, the skilful artisans, and the common people; the upper, which
occupied a hill, contained the great Brabant palace, the residence of
the Emperor Charles. This edifice, which, though its exterior was almost
wholly devoid of ornament, nevertheless presented a majestic aspect on
account of its vast size, adjoined a splendid park, whose leafy groups
of ancient trees merged into the forest of Soignies. Here also stood the
palaces of the great nobles and, on the side of the hill which sloped to
the lower city, the Cathedral of St. Gudule towered proudly aloft.

Much as Barbara had heard in praise of the magnificent market-place in
the lower city, with its marvellous Town Hall, it was always the upper
portion of Brussels she beheld when she thought of the capital. She had
felt that she belonged to this quarter, where all who had any claim to
aristocracy lived; here, near the palace and the beautiful leafy trees,
her future home had been in her imagination.

The result was different, and now the longing for the brilliant Brussels
on the hill was doubly stro