e Emperor Charles and King Ferdinand.

The man for whom Barbara's soul longed, as well as her eyes, rode on the
side toward her.

He was still half concealed by dust, but it could be no one else, for now
the outburst of enthusiasm, joy, and reverence from the populace reached
its climax. It seemed as though the very trees by the wayside joined in
the limitless jubilation. The greatness of the sovereign, the general,
and the happy head of the family, made the Protestants around him forget
with what perils this monarch threatened their faith and thereby
themselves; and he, too, the defender and loyal son of the Church,
appeared to thrust aside the thought that the people who greeted him with
such impetuous delight, and shared the two-fold festival of his family
with such warm devotion, were heretics who deserved punishment. At least
he saluted with gracious friendliness the throng that lined both sides of
the road, and as he passed by the garden of the little castle he even
smiled, and glanced toward the building as though a pleasant memory had
been awakened in his mind. At this moment Barbara gazed into the
Emperor's face.

Those were the features which had worn so tender an expression when, for
the first time, he had uttered the never-to-be-forgotten "Because I long
for love," and her yearning heart throbbed no less quickly now than on
that night. The wrong and suffering which he had inflicted upon her were
forgotten. She remembered nothing save that she loved him, that he was
the greatest and, to her, the dearest of all men.

It was perfectly impossible for him to see her, but she did not think of
that; and when he looked toward her with such joyous emotion, and the
cheers of the populace, like a blazing fire which a gust of wind fans
still higher, outstripped, as it were, themselves, she could not have
helped joining in the huzzas and shouts and acclamations around her
though she had been punished with imprisonment and death.

And clinging more firmly to the stalactite, Barbara rose on tiptoe and
mingled her voice with the joyous cheers of the multitude.

In the act her breath failed, and she felt a sharp pain in her chest, but
she heeded the suffering as little as she did the weakness of her limbs.
The physical part of her being seemed asleep or dead. Nothing was awake
or living except her soul. Nothing stirred within her breast save the
rapture of seeing him again, the indescribable pleasure of showing that
sh