e in a hired
one, and at least she could free him from that.

It was evident enough that her pitiful allowance did not proceed from the
Emperor's avarice; Charles only wished to force her to obey his wish to
shut her for the rest of her life in a cloister. The mother of his son
must remain concealed from the world; he desired to spare him in after
years the embarrassment of meeting the woman whose birth was so much more
humble than his own and his father's. Want should drive her from the
world, and, to hasten her flight, the shrewd adept in reading human
nature showed her in the distance the abbess's cross, and tried thereby
to arouse her ambition.

But in her childhood and youth Barbara had been accustomed to still
plainer living than she could grant herself in future, and she would have
been miserable in the most magnificent palace if she had been compelled
to relinquish her independence. Rather death in the Danube than to
dispense with it!

She was young, healthy, and vigorous, and it seemed like voluntary
mutilation to resign her liberty at twenty-one. But even had she felt the
need of the lonely cell, quiet contemplation, and more severe penance
than had been imposed upon her in the confessional, she would still have
remained in the world; for the more plainly the letter showed how eagerly
Charles desired to force her out of it, the more firmly she resolved to
remain in it. How many hopes this base epistle had destroyed; it seemed
as though it had killed the last spark of love in her soul!

Too much kindness leads to false paths scarcely more surely than the
contrary, and the Emperor's cruel decision destroyed and hardened many of
the best feelings in Barbara's heart, and prepared a place for resentment
and hatred.

The great sovereign's love, which had been the sunshine of her life, was
lost; her child had been taken from her; even the home that sheltered
her, and which hitherto she had regarded as a token of its father's
kindly care, was now withdrawn. A new life path must be found, but she
would not set out upon it from the Golden Cross, where her brief
happiness had bloomed, but from the place where she had experienced the
penury of her childhood and early youth.

The very next afternoon she moved into Wolf's house. Sister Hyacinthe was
obliged to return to her convent, so no one accompanied her except Frau
Lamperi. She had become attached to Barbara, and therefore remained in
her service instead of retu