magnificence the boy whom she had given him.

And now?

He had refused the leech's request to help her regain the divine gift to
which, according to his own confession, he owed the purest joys; and
her strong, merry child he, its own father, condemned to disappear and
wither in the imprisonment of a cloister. This must not be, and on her
way home she formed plan after plan to prevent it.

Pyramus attributed her sometimes depressed, sometimes irritable manner
to the disappointment of her wish.

What she had just learned and had had inflicted upon her filled her with
hatred of life.

Her two boys scarcely dared to approach their mother, who, unlike her
usual self, harshly rebuffed them.

At twilight Hannibal Melas appeared, full of joyous excitement.
Granvelle sent Barbara word that the doorkeeper Mangin would show her a
good seat. His Eminence desired to be remembered to her, and said that
only those who had been closely associated with his Majesty would be
admitted to this ceremony, and he knew that she ranked among the first
of these.

Barbara's features brightened and, as she saw how happy it made the
Maltese to be the bearer of so pleasant a message, she forced herself to
give a joyous expression to her gratitude. In the evening, and during
a sleepless night, she considered whether she should make use of
the invitation. What she had expected for herself and her child from
Charles's abdication had been mere chimeras of the brain, and what could
this spectacle offer her? She would only behold with her eyes what
she had often enough imagined with the utmost distinctness--the great
monarch divested of his grandeur and all his dignities.

But Granvelle's message that she was one cf those who stood nearest to
the abdicating sovereign constantly echoed in her ears, and her absence
from this ceremony would have seemed to her unnatural--nay, an offence
against something necessary.

Her husband was pleased with the great minister's kindness to his wife.
He had nothing to do in the palace, but he intended to look for the
children, who had gone there before noon with Frau Lamperi, that they
might get the best possible view of the approach of the princes and
dignitaries.

Barbara herself was to use a litter. The ex-'garde-robiere' had helped
her put on her gala attire, and Pyramus assured his wife that every
one would consider her the handsomest and most elegant lady in the
galleries. She knew that he was right, and