harles, gazing fixedly into vacancy. "Wherever I appear in public I see
this woman, always this woman! It is not only the basilisk's eye that
has constraining power. I can not help perceiving her, yet I have as
little desire to meet her gaze as to encounter vanity, worldly pleasure,
folly, sin."

"Then," cried Quijada angrily, "it will be advisable to transfer her
husband, who is in your Majesty's service, from here to Andalusia or to
the New World."

"As if she would accompany him!" exclaimed the monarch with a scornful
laugh. "No, my friend. This woman did not marry for her own pleasure,
but to cause me sorrow or indignation. She succeeded, too, to a certain
extent; but I do not war with women, least of all with one who is
so unhappy. If we send her husband--who, moreover, is a useful
fellow--across the ocean, she will stay here in Brussels, and we shall
fare like the maid-servants who killed the cocks, and were then waked
by the mistress of the house still earlier than before. Besides, one who
earnestly seeks his true salvation will not remove from his path such
a living memento, such a walking monitor of past sins and follies; and,
finally, this woman is not wholly wrong in deeming herself an
unusual person, cruelly as Heaven has destroyed her best gift. On no
account--you hear me--shall she be wounded or injured for my sake so
long as she reminds me only by her eyes that in happier days we were
closely connected. But to-day the ghost ventured to draw nearer to me
than is seemly, and I recognise the object. It entered the park, not on
my account, but the boy's--and, Adrian, from your house. I demand the
whole truth! Did she find the way to the boy, and was your wife, who is
usually a prudent woman, unwise enough to allow her to feast her eyes
upon him?"

"She is the child's mother," the valet answered gently, "and your
Majesty knows--"

"I know," Charles interrupted the faithful attendant in a sterner tone
than he commonly used to him, "that you were most positively forbidden
to permit any one to approach the boy, least of all the person who gazes
at him with greedy eyes, and from whom might proceed measureless perils.
Your wife, Adrian, who is tenderly attached to the child, will now
suffer the most painfully for the disobedience. It must go away from
here, go at once, and to a distant country--to Spain. If politics and
Heaven permit, I shall soon follow.--You, Luis, will now arrange with
Adrian the best plan