her John's abode and been permitted
sometimes to see him. Barbara's husband and father supposed that the
child which she had given to the Emperor was dead; both had placed this
interpretation upon her brief statement that it had been taken from her,
and afterward delicacy of feeling prevented any other allusion to this
painful subject.

Besides this proneness to reverie, Barbara's husband was sometimes
disturbed by the carelessness with which she neglected the most
important domestic matters if there was an entertainment or exhibition
which the Emperor Charles attended; and, finally, there was something in
her manner to the children, whom Pyramus loved above all things, which
disturbed, incensed, and wounded him, yet which he felt that neither
threats nor stern interposition could change.

He possessed no defence against the reveries except a warning or a
jesting word. Delight in brilliant spectacles was doubtless natural to
her disposition, and as Pyramus not only loved but esteemed her, it was
repugnant to his feelings to watch her. Yet when, nevertheless, he
once followed her steps, he had found her, according to her expressed
intention, among other women in St. Gudule's Cathedral. Her eyes, which
he watched intently, were constantly turned toward the great personages
whose presence adorned the festival--the Emperor and Queen Mary of
Hungary.

These expeditions were evidently not to meet a lover, yet from that hour
he cherished a conviction, mingled with a bitter sense of resentment,
that she went to the festivals which his Majesty attended in order to
see the man whom she had once loved, and whose image even now she could
not wholly efface from her imagination, perhaps also from her heart.

For her manner to the children, on the contrary, he could find no
plausible explanation. Her love for them was unmistakable. Yet what was
the meaning of the compassionate manner with which she treated them,
talked to them, spoke of them, until it nearly drove him frantic? She
often treated the healthy, merry older boy as if he was ill and needed
comfort, and the pretty infant in the cradle was addressed in the same
way.

If he summoned up his courage and openly reproved her, she always
answered in general terms, such as: "What do you mean? Are we not all
born to suffer?" or, "Shall we envy them because they have entered life
to endure pain and to die?"

Not until Pyramus, with sorrowful emotion, entreated her not to speak