fairest of all troubadours
to sing once more, before any other song, his beloved "Quia amore
langueo," and the most vigorous applause was bestowed on every one which
she afterward executed.

Now she had done all that was possible for the marquise, but no power on
earth should induce her to undertake anything of the sort a second time;
She was saying this to herself as she entered the little castle.

Let the old noblewoman come now!

She was not long in doing so. But how she looked!

The little gray curls done up in papers stood out queerly from her narrow
head. Her haggard cheeks were destitute of rouge and lividly pale.

Her black eyes glittered strangely from their deep sockets as if she were
insane, and ragged pieces of her morning dress, which she had torn in a
fit of helpless fury, hung down upon her breast.

The sight made Barbara shudder. She suspected the truth.

During her absence a new message of evil had reached the marquise.

Unless ten thousand lire could be sent to her son at once, he would be
condemned to the galleys, and his child would be abandoned to misery and
disgrace.

While speaking, the wretched mother, with trembling hands, tore out a
locket which she wore on a little chain around her neck. It contained the
angelic face, painted on ivory by an artist's hand, of a fair-haired
little girl. The child bore her name, Barbara. The singer knew this. How
often the affectionate grandmother had told her with sparkling eyes of
her little "Babette"!

The father chained to the rowers' bench among the most abominable
ruffians, this loveliest of children perishing in hunger, misery, and
shame--what a terrible picture! Barbara beheld it with tangible
distinctness, and while the undignified old aristocrat, deprived of all
self-control, sobbed and besought her to have compassion, the girl who
had grown up amid poverty and care went back in memory to the days when,
to earn money for a thin soup, a bit of dry bread, a small piece of cheap
cow beef, or to protect herself from the importunity of an unpaid
tradesman, she had washed laces with her own delicate hands and seen her
nobly born, heroic father scratch crooked letters and scrawling ornaments
upon common gray tin.

The same fate, nay, one a thousand times worse, awaited this wonderfully
lovely patrician child, whose father was to wield the oars in the galleys
if no one interceded for the unfortunate man.

What was life!

From the height of happ