ted to her to raise her heart in song filled her with the same
blissful hope as ever; but if the report, which constantly grew more
definite, did not deceive, the Emperor's formal abdication was close at
hand, and to attend this great event seemed to her a duty of the heart,
a necessity which she could not avoid. In many a quiet hour she told
herself that Charles, when he had divested himself of all his honours
and become a mere man like the rest of the world, would draw nearer to
her boy, and through him to her. As an ordinary mortal, he would be able
to love, like every other father, the child that attracted him to Spain.
If in his life of meditation, far from the tumult of the world, the
strife for knowledge should lead him to look back into the past, and
in doing so he again recalled the days to which he owed his greatest
happiness, could he help remembering her and her singing?

How often she had heard that the knowledge of self was the highest
goal of thought to the philosopher, and as such Charles would certainly
retire into seclusion, and, as surely as she desired to be saved, he had
wronged her and must then perceive it. Probably there were thousands of
more important things in which he had to bury himself, but the boy would
remind him of her and the injury which he had done.

Never had she more deeply admired the grandeur of her imperial lover,
and with entire confidence she believed that this stupendous act of
renunciation would mark the beginning of a new life for her and her
child.

September and the first half of October passed like a fevered dream.

The abdication would certainly take place.

Charles had resolved to transfer all the crowns which adorned him to his
son Philip, and retire to a Spanish monastery.

Barbara also learned when and where the solemn ceremony was to take
place. Day after day she again mingled with the visitors to the palace,
and on the twenty-first of October she saw the eleven Knights of the
Golden Fleece, to whom he wished to restore the office of grand master,
enter the palace chapel.

How magnificently these greatest of all dignitaries were attired! how
all that she saw of this rare event in the palace chapel reminded her of
the solemn ceremonial at the Trausnitzburg at Landshut, and her resolve
to surrender her child, that it might possess the same splendour and
honours as its sister's husband!

The wishes cherished at that time were still unfulfilled; but the father