rst; for
while the singers in the balcony began the "Venite populi mundi," so
familiar to her, and the cheers redoubled, Charles descended, and in what
a guise she saw him again! He looked ten years older, and she felt with
him the keen suffering which every step must cause.

This time it was not Quijada, but the Duke of Alba, who offered him the
support of his mailed arm, and, leaning on it, he ascended the low stage.

While doing so he turned his back to Barbara, and as with bent figure and
outstretched head he wearily climbed the two stairs leading to the
platform, he presented a pitiable spectacle.

And have you loved this wreck of a man with all the fervour of your
heart? the girl asked herself; does it still throb faster for him? could
you even now expect from him a fairer happiness than from all these
handsome warriors and nobles in the pride of their manly vigour? To this
old man you have sacrificed happiness and honour, given up your father
and the noblest, best of friends!

Fierce indignation for her own folly suddenly seized upon her with such
overmastering power that she looked away from the sovereign toward the
singers, who were summoning the whole world to pay homage to yonder
broken-down man, as though he were a demigod.

A bitter smile hovered around her lips as she did so, but it vanished as
swiftly as it had come; for when she again fixed her eyes upon the
monarch, she would gladly have joined in the mighty hymn. As if by a
miracle, he had become an entirely different person. Now he stood before
the throne in the full loftiness and dignity of commanding majesty. A
purple mantle fell from his shoulders, and the Duke of Alba was placing
the crown on his head instead of the velvet cap.

Oh, no, she need not be ashamed of having loved this man, and she was
not; for she loved him still, and was fully and joyously aware that
whatever he suffered, whatever tortured and prematurely aged the man
still in his fourth decade, no one on earth equalled him in intellect and
grandeur.

And as pages then placed the velvet cushions on the carpet; as the Duke
of Parma, the gonfaloniere on whose head rested the blessing of the
representative of Christ, bent the knee before his imperial
father-in-law, and the proud Alba and the other Knights of the Golden
Fleece who were present did the same; as Charles, the grand master of the
order, took from the cushion the symbol of honour which Count Henry of
Nassau handed to