noon. Lamperi and the maid might provide the
meal and attend to the rest of the household affairs. It was far past
twelve, and it would still be a long time before she went home, for
she must, yes, must go up to the palace park and to the Dubois house to
inquire where her soul must seek her child in future.

Her feet could scarcely support her when she entered the dwelling.

Startled at her appearance, Frau Traut compelled the exhausted woman to
sit down. How dishevelled, nay, wild, Barbara, who was usually so well
dressed, looked! But she, too, that day did not present her usual dainty
appearance, and her eyes and face were reddened by weeping. Barbara
instantly noticed this, and it confirmed her conjecture. This woman,
too, was bewailing the child which the cruel despot had torn from her.

"He is on the way to Spain!" she cried to the other. "There is nothing
to conceal here."

Frau Traut started, and vehemently forbade Barbara to say even one word
more about the boy if she did not wish her to show her the door and
close it against her forever.

But this was too much for the haughty mother of the Emperor's son.
The terrible agitation of her soul forced an utterance, and in wild
rebellion she swore to the terrified woman that she would burden herself
with the sin of perjury and break the silence to which she had bound
herself if she did not confess to her where Massi was taking her boy.
She would neither seek him nor strive to get possession of him, but
if she could not imagine where and with what people he was living, she
would die of longing. She would have allowed herself to be abused and
trodden under foot in silence, but she would not suffer herself to be
deprived of the last remnant of her maternal rights.

Here Adrian himself entered the room; but Barbara was by no means calmed
by his appearance, and with a fresh outburst of wrath shrieked to his
face that he might choose whether he would confide to her, the mother,
where his master was taking the child or see her rush from here to the
market place and call out to the people what she had promised, for the
boy's sake, to hold secret.

The valet saw that she would keep her word and, to prevent greater
mischief, he informed her that the violinist Massi was commissioned to
take her son to Spain to rear him in his wife's native place until his
Majesty should alter his plans concerning him.

This news produced a great change in the tortured mother. With
affec