t on the very occasions
which brought together the most aristocratic Spanish society in Brussels.

So, after a fresh dispute with Alba, in which the victor on many a
battlefield was forced to yield, she had obtained his consent to retire
to Ghent instead of Mons.

True, the duke would have preferred to induce her to go to Spain, and
tried to persuade her to do so by the assurance that the King himself
desired to receive her there.

But she had been warned.

Through Hannibal Melas and other members of her own party she had learned
that Philip intended, if she came to Spain, to remove her from the eyes
of the world by placing her in a convent, and never had she felt less
inclination to take the veil.

Her departure from Brussels had done Alba and his functionaries a
service, for she had constantly forced herself into the government
building to obtain news of her son.

The great and opulent city of Ghent, the birthplace of the Emperor
Charles, of which he had once said to Francis I, the King of France, that
Paris would go into his glove (Gant), had been chosen by Barbara for
several reasons. The principal one was that she would find there several
old friends of former days, one of whom, her singing-master Feys, had
promised to accept her voice and enable her to serve her art again with
full pleasure.

The other was Hannibal Melas, who before Granvelle's fall had been
transferred there as one of the higher officials of the government.

She also entered into relations with other heads of the Spanish party,
and thus found in Ghent what she sought. The pension allowed her enabled
her to hire a pretty house, and to furnish it with a certain degree of
splendour. A companion, for whom she selected an elderly unmarried lady
who belonged to an impoverished noble family, accompanied her in her
walks; a major-domo governed the four men-servants and the maids of the
household; Frau Lamperi retained her position as lady's maid; the steward
and cook attended to the kitchen and the cellar; and two pages, with a
pretty one-horse carriage, lent an air of elegance to her style of
living.

For the religious service, which was directed by her own chaplain, she
had had a chapel fitted up in the house, according to the Ratisbon
fashion. The poor were never turned from her door without alms, and where
she encountered great want she often relieved it with a generosity far
beyond her means. Under the instruction of Maestro Feys, she eag