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Barbara Blomberg — Complete

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Title: Barbara Blomberg — Complete

Author: Georg Ebers

Translator: Mary J. Safford


        
Release date: November 15, 2004 [eBook #5571]
                Most recently updated: December 28, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5571

Credits: Produced by David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BARBARA BLOMBERG — COMPLETE ***



Produced by David Widger





BARBARA BLOMBERG

By Georg Ebers


Translated from the German by Mary J. Safford




BOOK 1.




CHAPTER I.

The sun sometimes shone brightly upon the little round panes of the
ancient building, the Golden Cross, on the northern side of the square,
which the people of Ratisbon call “on the moor”; sometimes it was veiled
by gray clouds. A party of nobles, ecclesiastics, and knights belonging
to the Emperor’s train were just coming out. The spring breeze banged
behind them the door of the little entrance for pedestrians close beside
the large main gateway.

The courtiers and ladies who were in the chapel at the right of the
corridor started. “April weather!” growled the corporal of the Imperial
Halberdiers to the comrade with whom he was keeping; guard at the foot
of the staircase leading to the apartments of Charles V, in the second
story of the huge old house.

“St. Peter’s day,” replied the other, a Catalonian. “At my home fresh
strawberries are now growing in the open air and roses are blooming in
the gardens. Take it all in all, it’s better to be dead in Barcelona
than alive in this accursed land of heretics!”

“Come, come,” replied the other, “life is life! ‘A live dog is better
than a dead king,’ says a proverb in my country.”

“And it is right, too,” replied the Spaniard. “But ever since we came
here our master’s face looks as if imperial life didn’t taste exactly
like mulled wine, either.”

The Netherlander lowered his halberd and answered his companion’s words
first with a heavy sigh, and then with the remark: “Bad weather upstairs
as well as down--the very worst! I’ve been in the service thirteen
years, but I never saw him like this, not even after the defeat in
Algiers. That means we must keep a good lookout. Present halberds! Some
one is coming down.”

Both quickly assumed a more erect attitude, but the Spaniard whispered
to his comrade: “It isn’t he. His step hasn’t sounded like that since
the gout--”

“Quijada!” whispered the Netherlander, and both he and the man from
Barcelona presented halberds with true military bearing; but the staves
of their descending weapons soon struck the flags of the pavement again,
for a woman’s voice had detained the man whom the soldiers intended to
salute, and in his place two slender lads rushed down the steps.

The yellow velvet garments, with ash-gray facings, and cap of the same
material in the same colours, were very becoming to these youths--the
Emperor’s pages--and, though the first two were sons of German and
Italian counts, and the third who followed them was a Holland baron, the
sentinels took little more notice of them than of Queen Mary’s pointers
following swiftly at their heels.

“Of those up there,” observed the halberdier from Haarlem under his
breath, “a man would most willingly stiffen his back for Quijada.”

“Except their Majesties, of course,” added the Catalonian with dignity.

“Of course,” the other repeated. “Besides, the Emperor Charles himself
bestows every honour on Don Luis. I was in Algiers at the time. A
hundred more like him would have made matters different, I can tell you.
If it beseemed an insignificant fellow like me, I should like to ask why
his Majesty took him from the army and placed him among the courtiers.”

Here he stopped abruptly, for, in spite of the gaily dressed nobles and
ladies, priests, knights, and attendants who were passing up and down
the corridor, he had heard footsteps on the stairs which must be
those of men in high position. He was not mistaken--one was no less
a personage than the younger Granvelle, the Bishop of Arras, who,
notwithstanding his nine-and-twenty years, was already the favourite
counsellor of Charles V; the other, a man considerably his senior, Dr.
Mathys, of Bruges, the Emperor’s physician.

The bishop was followed by a secretary clad in black, with a portfolio
under his arm; the leech, by an elderly assistant.

The fine features of the Bishop of Arras, which revealed a nature
capable of laughter and enjoyment, now looked as grave as his
companion’s--a fact which by no means escaped the notice of the
courtiers in the corridor, but no one ventured to approach them with
a question, although--it had begun to rain again--they stopped before
going out of doors and stood talking together in low tones.

Many would gladly have caught part of their conversation, but no one
dared to move nearer, and the Southerners and Germans among them did not
understand the Flemish which they spoke.

Not until after the leech had raised his tall, pointed hat and the
statesman had pressed his prelate’s cap closer upon his short, wavy dark
hair and drawn his sable-trimmed velvet cloak around him did several
courtiers hasten forward with officious zeal to open the little side
door for them.

Something must be going wrong upstairs.

Dr. Mathys’s jovial face wore a very different expression when his
imperial patient was doing well, and Granvelle always bestowed a
friendly nod on one and another if he himself had cause to be content.

When the door had closed behind the pair, the tongues of the
ecclesiastics, the secular lords, and the ladies in the corridor
were again loosed; but there were no loud discussions in the various
languages now mingling in the Golden Cross, far less was a gay
exclamation or a peal of laughter heard from any of the groups who stood
waiting for the shower to cease.

Although each individual was concerned about his own affairs, one
thought, nevertheless, ruled them all--the Emperor Charles, his health,
and his decisions. Upon them depended not only the destiny of the world,
but also the weal and woe of the greatest as well as the humblest of
those assembled here.

“Emperor Charles” was the spell by which the inhabitants of half the
world obtained prosperity or ill-luck, war or peace, fulfilment or
denial of the wishes which most deeply stirred their souls. Even the
highest in the land, who expected from his justice or favour fresh
good-fortune or the averting of impending disasters, found their way
to him wherever, on his long and numerous journeys, he established his
court.

Numerous petitioners had also flocked to Ratisbon, but the two great
nobles who now entered the Golden Cross certainly did not belong to
their number. One shook the raindrops from his richly embroidered velvet
cloak and the plumes in his cap, the other from his steel helmet and
suit of Milan mail, inlaid with gold. Chamberlain de Praet accosted the
former, Duke Peter of Columna, in Italian; the latter, the Landgrave of
Leuchtenberg, in a mixture of German and his Flemish native tongue. He
had no occasion to say much, for the Emperor wished to be alone. He had
ordered even crowned heads and ambassadors to be denied admittance.

The Duke of Columna gaily begged for a dry shelter until the shower
was over, but the Landgrave requested to be announced to the Queen of
Hungary.

The latter, however, had also declined to grant any audiences that
afternoon. The royal lady, the Emperor’s favourite sister, was in
her own room, adjoining her imperial brother’s, talking with Don Luis
Quijada, the brave nobleman of whom the Spanish and the Netherland
soldiers had spoken with equal warmth.

His personal appearance rendered it an easy matter to believe in the
sincerity of their words, for the carriage of his slender, vigorous
form revealed all the pride of the Castilian noble. His face, with its
closely cut pointed beard, was the countenance of a true warrior, and
the expression of his black eyes showed the valiant spirit of a loyal,
kind, and simple heart.

The warm confidence with which Mary, the widow of the King of Hungary,
who fell in the Turkish war, gazed into Quijada’s finely modelled,
slightly bronzed countenance proved that she knew how to estimate his
worth aright. She had sent for him to open her whole heart.

The vivacious woman, a passionate lover of the chase, found life in
Ratisbon unendurable. She would have left the city long ago to perform
her duties in the Netherlands--which she ruled as regent in the name
of her imperial brother--and devote herself to hunting, to her heart’s
content, if the condition of the monarch’s health had not detained her
near him.

She pitied Charles because she loved him, yet she was weary of playing
the sick nurse.

She had just indignantly informed Quijada what an immense burden of
work, in spite of the pangs of the gout, her suffering brother had
imposed upon himself ever since the first cock-crow. But he would take
no better care of himself, and therefore it was difficult to help him.
Was it not utterly unprecedented? Directly after mass he had examined
dozens of papers, made notes on the margins, and affixed his signature;
then he received Father Pedro de Soto, his confessor, the nuncio, the
English and the Venetian ambassadors; and, lastly, had an interview with
young Granvelle, the Bishop of Arras, which had continued three full
hours, and perhaps might be going on still had not Dr. Mathys, the
leech, put an end to it.

Queen Mary had just found him utterly exhausted, with his face buried in
his hands.

“And you, too,” she added in conclusion, “can not help admitting that if
this state of things continues there must be an evil end.”

Quijada bent his head in assent, and then answered modestly:

“Yet your Majesty knows our royal master’s nature. He will listen calmly
to you, whom he loves, or to me, who was permitted to remain at his side
as a page, or probably to the two Granvelles, Malfalconnet, and others
whom he trusts, when they venture to warn him--”

“And yet keep on in his mad career,” interrupted Queen Mary with an
angry gesture of the hand.

“Plus ultra--more, farther--is his motto,” observed Quijada in a tone of
justification.

“Forward ceaselessly, for aught I care, so long as the stomach and the
feet are sound!” replied the Queen, raising her hand to the high lace
ruff, which oppressed the breathing of one so accustomed to the outdoor
air. “But when, like him, a man must give up deer-stalking and at every
movement makes a wry face and can scarcely repress a groan--it might
move a stone to pity!--he ought to choose another motto. Persuade him to
do so, Quijada, if you are really his friend.”

The smile with which the nobleman listened to this request plainly
showed the futility of the demand.

The Queen noticed it, threw her arm aloft as if she were hurling a
hunting spear, and exclaimed “I’m not easily deceived, Luis. Whether you
could or not, the will is lacking. You shun the attempt! Because you are
young yourself, and can still cope with the bear and wild boar, you like
the motto, which will probably lead to new wars, and thereby to
fresh renown. But, alas! my poor, poor brother, who--how long ago it
is!--could once have thrown even you upon the sand, what can he do, with
this accursed gout? And besides, what more can the Emperor Charles gain,
since there is no chance of obtaining the sovereignty of the world, of
which he once dreamed? He must learn to be content! Surely at his age!
It is easy to calculate, for his life began with the century, and this
is its forty-sixth year. Of course, with you soldiers the years of
warfare count double, and he--Duke Alba said so--was born a general. One
need not be able to reckon far in order to number how many months he has
spent in complete peace. And then he attained his majority at fifteen,
and with what weighty cares the man of the ‘plus ultra’ has loaded his
shoulders since that time! You, and many others at the court, had still
more to do, but, Luis, one thing, and it is the hardest burden, you were
all spared. I know it. It is called responsibility. Compared with
this all others are mere fluttering feathers. Its weight may become
unendurable when the weal and woe of half the world are at stake. Thus
every year of government was equal to three of war; but you, Luis--the
question is allowable when put to a man-how old are you?”

“Within a few months of forty.”

“So young!” cried the Queen. “Yet, when one looks at you closely, your
appearance corresponds with your years.”

Quijada pointed to the gray locks on his temples, but the Queen eagerly
continued:

“I noticed that at Brussels. And do you know what gave you those few
white hairs? Simply the responsibility that so cruelly shortened the
Emperor’s youth, and which at least grazes you. As I saw him to-day,
Luis, many a man of sixty has a more vigorous appearance.”

“And yet, if your Majesty will permit me to say so,” Quijada replied
with a low bow, “he may be in a very different condition to-morrow. I
heard Dr. Mathys himself remark that the life of a gouty patient was
like a showery day in July--gloomy enough while the thunder-storm was
raging, but radiant before and afterward until the clouds rose again.
Surely your Majesty remembers how erect, how vigorous, and how knightly
his bearing was when he greeted you on your arrival. The happiness of
having his beloved sister again restored his paralyzed buoyancy speedily
enough, although just at present there is certainly no lack of cares
pressing upon him, and notwithstanding the disastrous conditions which
we found existing among the godless populace here. That this cruel
responsibility, however, can mature the mind without harming the body
your Majesty is a living example.”

“Nonsense!” retorted the regent in protest. “From you, at least, I
forbid idle flattery!”

As she spoke she pointed with the riding whip, which, on account of her
four-footed favourites, she carried in her hand, to her own hair. True,
so far as it was visible under the stiff jewelled velvet cap which
covered her head, the fair tresses had a lustrous sheen, and the braids,
interwoven with pearls, were unusually thick, but a few silver threads
appeared amid the locks which clustered around the intellectual brow.

Quijada saw them, and, with a respectful bow, answered.

“The heavy burden of anxiety for the Netherlands, which is not always
rewarded with fitting gratitude.”

“Oh, no,” replied the Queen, shrugging her shoulders contemptuously.
“Yes, many things in Brussels rouse my indignation, but they do not turn
my hair gray. It began to whiten up here, under the widow’s cap, if
you care to know it, and, if the Emperor’s health does not improve, the
locks there will soon look like my white Diana’s.”

Here she hesitated, and, accustomed both in the discharge of the duties
of her office and during the chase not to deviate too far from the goal
she had in view, she first gave her favourite dog, which had leaped on
Don Luis in friendly greeting, a blow with her whip, and then said in a
totally different tone:

“But I am not the person in question. You have already heard that you
must help me, Luis. Did you see the Emperor yesterday after vespers?”

“I had the honour, your Majesty.”

“And did not the conviction that he is in evil case force itself upon
you?”

“I felt it so keenly that I spoke to Dr. Mathys of his feeble
appearance, his bowed figure, and the other things which I would so
gladly have seen otherwise.”

“And these things? Speak frankly!”

“These things,” replied the major-domo, after a brief hesitation, “are
the melancholy moods to which his Majesty often resigns himself for
hours.”

“And which remind you of Queen Juana, our unhappy mother?” asked the
Queen with downcast eyes.

“Remind is a word which your Majesty will permit me to disclaim,”
 replied Quijada resolutely. “The great thinker, who never loses sight of
the most distant goal, who weighs and considers again and again ere
he determines upon the only right course in each instance--the great
general who understands how to make far-reaching plans for military
campaigns as ably as to direct a cavalry attack--the statesman whose
penetration pierces deeper than the keen intelligence of his famous
councillors--the wise law-giver, the ruler with the iron strength of
will and unfailing memory, is perhaps the soundest person mentally among
all of us at court-nay, among the millions who obey him. But, so far as
my small share of knowledge extends, melancholy has nothing to do with
the mind. It is dependent upon the state of the spirits, and springs
from bile----”

“You learned that from Dr. Mathys,” interrupted the royal lady, “and the
quacks repeat it from their masters Hippocrates and Galen. Such parrot
gabble does not please me. To my woman’s reason, it seems rather that
when the mind is ill we should try a remedy whose effect upon it has
already been proved, and I think I have found it.”

“I am still ignorant of it,” replied Quijada eagerly; “but I would swear
by my saint that you have hit upon the right expedient.”

“Listen, then, and this time I believe you will have no cause to repent
your hasty oath. Since death robbed our sovereign lord of his wife,
and the gout has prevented his enjoyment of the chief pleasures of
life--hunting, the tournament, and the other pastimes which people of
our rank usually pursue--in what can he find diversion? The masterpieces
of painters and other artists, the inventions of mechanicians and
clock-makers, and the works of scholars have no place here, but
probably----”

“Then it is the noble art of music which your Majesty has in view,”
 Quijada eagerly interrupted. “Admirable! For, since the days of King
Saul and the harper David----”

“There is certainly no better remedy for melancholy,” said the Queen,
completing the exclamation of the loyal man. “But it could affect no
one more favourably than the Emperor. You yourself know how keen a
connoisseur he is, and how often this has been confirmed by our greatest
masters. Need I remind you of the high mass in Cologne, at which the
magnificent singing seemed fairly to reanimate him after the defection
of the heretical archbishop--which threatens to have a disastrous
influence upon my Netherlanders also--had robbed him of the last remnant
of his enjoyment of life, already clouded? The indignation aroused by
the German princes, and the difficult decision to which their conduct is
forcing him, act upon his soul like poison. But hesitation is not in
my nature, so I thought: Let us have music--good, genuine music. Then
I sent a mounted messenger to order Gombert, the conductor of his
orchestra, and the director of my choir of boys, to bring their
musicians to Ratisbon. The whole company will arrive this evening. Dash
forward is my motto, and not only while in the saddle during the chase.
But, Luis, you must now tell me--”

“That your Majesty’s sisterly affection has discovered the only right
course,” cried Quijada, deeply touched, pressing his lips respectfully
to the flowing sleeve of her robe.

The major--domo’s assurance undoubtedly sprang from the depths of his
heart, yet the doubts which the hasty action of the vivacious sovereign
aroused in his mind compelled him to represent to her, though with the
courteous caution which his position demanded, that her bold measure
might only too easily arouse the displeasure of the person whom it was
intended to benefit. The expense it would entail especially troubled
Quijada, and the Queen herself appeared surprised when he estimated the
sum which would be required for the transportation of the band and the
boy choir from Brussels to Ratisbon and back again.

Forty musicians, twelve boy singers, the leaders, and the paymaster must
be moved, and in their train were numerous grooms and attendants, as
well as conveyances for the baggage and the valuable instruments.

Besides, the question of accommodation for this large number in the
already crowded city now arose, for the Queen confessed that, in order
to make the surprise complete, no one had been commissioned to find
lodgings.

The musicians, who had displayed the most praiseworthy promptness, would
arrive three days earlier than she had expected.

The royal lady readily admitted that the utmost haste was necessary.
Yet she knew that, if any one could accomplish the impossible, it was
Quijada, where the object in view was to serve her and the Emperor.

The influence of this eulogy was doubled by a tender glance from her
bright eyes, and the Spaniard promised to do everything in his power to
secure the success of her beautiful surprise. There would undoubtedly
be difficulties with his Majesty and the treasurer on the score of the
expense, for their finances were at the very lowest ebb.

“There is always the same annoyance where money is concerned,” cried the
Queen irritably, “in spite of the vast sums which my Netherlands pour
into the treasury--four times as much as Spain supplies, including the
gold and silver of the New World. You keep it secret, but two fifths
of the revenue from all the countries over which Charles reigns are
contributed by my provinces. Torrents of ducats inundate your treasury,
and yet--yet--it’s enough to drive one mad!--in spite of this and the
lamentable parsimony with which the Emperor deprives himself of both
great and small pleasures--it is simply absurd!--the story is always:
The finances are at the lowest ebb--save and save again. To protect the
plumes in his new cap from being injured by the rain, the sovereign
of half the world ordered an old hat to be brought, and waited in the
shower until the shabby felt came. And where are the millions which this
excellent economist saves from his personal expenses? The dragon War
devours them all. True, he has vanquished foes enough, but the demon of
melancholy, that makes even Dr. Mathys anxious, is far worse than the
infidels before whom you were compelled to retreat in Algiers--far more
terrible than the Turks and heretics combined. Yet what are you and
the wise treasurer doing? The idea of lessening the salaries of the
physician-in-ordinary and his colleagues has never entered the heads
of the estimable gentlemen who call themselves his Majesty’s faithful
servants. Very well! Then put the musicians’ travelling expenses upon
the apothecary’s bill. They have as much right to be there as the senna
leaves. But, if the penny pinchers in the council of finance refuse to
advance the necessary funds, why--charge this medicine to my account.
I’ll pay for it, in spite of the numerous leeches that suck my
substance.”

“It certainly will not come to that, your Majesty,” replied Quijada
soothingly. “Our sovereign lord knows, too, that it beseems him to be
less rigid in saving. Only yesterday he dipped into his purse deeply
enough for another remedy.”

“What was that?” asked the Queen in surprise.

“He paid the debts of my colleague Malfalconnet, not less than ten
thousand ducats.”

“There it is!” exclaimed the regent, striking her hands sharply
together. “The baron dispels the Emperor’s melancholy by his ready wit,
which often hits the nail on the head, and his nimble tongue, but my
medicine must provide the fitting mood for Malfalconnet’s dearly bought
jests and witticisms to exert the proper influence.”

“And, moreover,” Quijada added gaily, “your Majesty will present the
completed deed for the treasurer’s action. But now I most humbly entreat
you to dismiss me. I must inform the quartermasters at once, and look
after the matter myself if your Majesty’s costly magic pills are not to
be spoiled by this wet April weather. Besides, many of the musicians are
not the strongest of men.”

Bowing as he spoke, he prepared to take leave of the Queen, but she
detained him with the remark:

“Our invitation went to Sir Wolf Hartschwert also. He is a native of
Ratisbon, and can aid you and the quartermasters in assigning lodgings.”

“A fresh proof of the wise caution of my august mistress,” replied
Quijada. “If your Majesty will permit, I should like to talk with my
royal patroness about this man shortly. I have something in my mind
concerning him which can not be easily explained in a few words,
especially as I know that the modest, trustworthy fellow----”

“If what you have in view is for his benefit,” the Queen eagerly
interrupted, “it is granted in advance.”

The promise reached Quijada just as he gained the threshold; ere he
crossed it, Queen Mary called to him again, saying frankly: “I will not
let you go so, Luis! You are an honest man, and I am ashamed to deceive
you. The cure of his Majesty’s melancholy is my principal object, it is
true, but one half the expense of this medicine ought to be credited
to me; for--but do not tell the treasurer--for it will afford me relief
also. I can endure these rooms no longer. The forest is putting forth
its first green leafage. The birds are returning. Red deer are plenty in
the woods along the Danube. I must get out of doors into the open air.
As matters are now, I could not leave his Majesty; but when the band
and the boy choir are at his disposal, they will dispel his melancholy
moods, and I can venture later to leave him to you and Malfalconnet,
whose wit will be freshly seasoned by the payment of his debts. O Luis!
if only I can get out of doors! Meanwhile, may music do for my imperial
brother what we anticipate! And one thing more: Take Master Adrian with
you. I released him from attendance upon the Emperor until midnight. It
was no easy matter. When you have provided the favourites of Apollo
with lodgings, come to me again, however late the hour may be. Sir Wolf
Hartschwert must call early to-morrow morning. The nuncio brought some
new songs from Rome. The music is too high for my voice, and the knight
understands how to transpose the notes for me better than even the
leader of the choir, Appenzelder.”




CHAPTER II.

The April sun, ere it sank to rest, had won the victory and kindly
dried the garments of the horsemen who were approaching Ratisbon by the
Nuremberg road.

A young man who had ridden forward in advance of the great train of
travellers behind him checked his steed above the village of Kneiting,
just where the highway descended in many a curve to the valley of the
Danube, and gazed at the landscape whose green spring leafage, freshened
by rain, appeared before him.

His heart throbbed faster, and he thought that he had seen no fairer
prospect in all the wide tract of earth over which he had wandered
during the past five years. Below him were green meadows and fields,
pleasant villages, and the clear, full current of the Danube, along
whose left bank extended a beautifully formed mountain chain, whose
declivity toward the river presented a rich variety to the eye,
for sometimes it was clothed in budding groves, sometimes displayed
picturesque bare cliffs, and again vineyards in which labourers were
working. From the farthest distance the steeples of Ratisbon offered the
first greeting to the resting horseman.

What a wealth of memories this pleasant landscape awoke in the mind of
the returning traveller! How often he had walked through these charming
valleys, climbed these heights, stopped in these villages! It was
difficult for him to turn from this view, but he let his bay horse have
its way when the companion whom he had left behind overtook him here,
and the animal followed the other’s black Brabant steed, with which it
had long been on familiar terms. He rode slowly at his friend’s side
into the valley.

Both silently feasted their eyes upon the scene opening with increasing
magnificence before them.

As they reached the village of Winzer, the victorious sun was
approaching the western horizon, and diffused over it a fan of golden
rays. The gray cloud bank above, which a light breeze was driving before
it, was bordered with golden edges. The young green foliage, refreshed
by the rain, glittered as richly and magnificently as emerald and
chrysoprase, and the primroses and other early spring flowers, which had
just grown up along the roadside and in the meadows, shone in brighter
colours than in the full light of noon. The big fresh drops on the
leaves and blossoms sparkled and glittered in the last rays of the sun.

Now Ratisbon also appeared.

The city, with its throng of steeples, was surrounded by a damp
vapour which the reflection of the sun coloured with a faint, scarcely
perceptible roseate hue. The notes of bells from the twin towers of the
cathedral and the convent of Nieder Munster, from St. Emmeram on the
right, and the church of the Dominicans on the left, echoed softly in
this hour when Nature and human activity were at rest--often dying away
in the distance--to greet the returning citizen.

Obeying an involuntary impulse, Wolf Hartschwert raised his hat. Within
the shelter of the walls of this venerable city he had played as a
boy, completed his school and student days, and early felt the first
quickened throbbing of the heart. Here he had first been permitted to
test what knowledge he had won in the schools of poetry and music.

He had remained in Ratisbon until his twenty-first year, then he had
ventured out into the world, and, after an absence of five years, he was
returning home again.

But was the stately city before him really his home?

When he had just gazed down upon it from the height, this question had
occupied his thoughtful mind.

He had not been born on the shore of this river, but of the Main. All
who had been dearest to him in Ratisbon--the good people who had reared
him from his fourth year as their own child, the woman who gave him
birth, and the many others to whom he was indebted for kindnesses--were
no longer there.

But why had he not thought first of the mother, who is usually the
centre of the circle of love, and whose figure precedes every other, now
that he was approaching the place where she rested beneath the turf? He
asked himself the question with a faint feeling of self-reproach, but he
did not confess the true reason.

When the summons to Ratisbon had reached him in Brussels, he had been
joyously ready to obey it--nay, he had felt it a great happiness to see
again the beloved place for which he had never ceased to long. And yet,
the nearer he approached it, the more anxiously his heart throbbed.

When, soon after noonday, the rain drenched him, he had experienced
no discomfort, because such exquisite sunny visions of the future had
hovered before him; but as the sky cleared they had shrivelled and
doubt of the result of the decision which he was riding to meet had cast
everything else into the shade.

Now the whole city appeared before him, and, as he looked at the
cathedral, whose machicolated tower permitted the rosy hue of the sky to
shine through, his heart rose again, and he gazed with grateful delight
at the verdant spring attire of his home and the magnificence with which
she greeted him; her returning son.

“Isn’t it beautiful here?” he asked, suddenly breaking the silence as
he turned to Massi, the violinist, who rode at his side, and then
was secretly grateful to him when, after a curt “Very pleasant,” he
disturbed him with no further speech.

It was so delightful to listen to the notes of the bells, so familiar to
him, whose pure tones had accompanied with their charming melody all his
wanderings in childhood and youth. At the same time, the mood in which
the best musical ideas came to him suddenly overpowered him. A new air,
well worth remembering, pressed itself on him unbidden, and his excited
imagination showed him in its train himself, and by his side, first,
a romping, merry child, and then a girlish figure in the first budding
charm of youth. He thought he heard her sing, and old, unforgotten notes
of songs swiftly crowded out his own musical creations.

Every tone from the fresh red lips of the lovely fair-haired girl
awakened a new memory. The past lived again, and, without his volition,
transformed the image of the child of whom he had thought whenever he
recalled his youthful days in Ratisbon into that of a lovely bride, with
the myrtle wreath on her waving hair, while beside her he beheld himself
with the wedding bouquet on his slashed velvet holiday doublet.

He involuntarily seized the saddlebag which contained the handsomest
gift he had bought in Brussels for the person who had drawn him back to
Ratisbon with a stronger power of attraction than anything else. If all
went well, that very day, perhaps, he might have the right to call her
his own.

These visions of the future aroused so joyous a feeling in his young
soul that Massi, the violinist, read in his by no means mobile features
what was passing in his mind. His cheery “Well, Sir Knight!” awakened
his ever-courteous colleague and travelling companion from his dream,
and, when the latter started and turned toward him, Alassi gaily
continued: “To see his home and his family again does, indeed, make any
man glad! The sight of yonder shining steeples and roofs seems to make
your heart laugh, Sir Wolf, and, by Our Lady, you have good reason
to bestow one or more candles upon her, for, besides other delightful
things, a goodly heritage is awaiting you in Ratisbon.”

Here he paused, for the sunny radiance vanished simultaneously from
the sky and from his companion’s face. The violinist, as if in apology,
added: “Some trouble always precedes an inheritance, and who knows
whether, in your case also, rumour did not follow the evil custom of
lying or making a mountain out of a molehill?”

Wolf Hartschwert slightly shrugged his shoulders and calmly answered:

“It is all true about the heritage, Massi, and also the trouble, but
it is unpleasant to hear you, too, call me ‘Sir.’ Let it drop for the
future, if we are to be intimate. To others I shall, of course, be the
knight or cavalier. You know what the title procures for a man, though
your saying--

       ‘Knightly Knightly rank with lack of land
        More care than joy hath at command,’

is but too true. As for the heritage, an old friend has really named me
in his will, but you must not expect that it is a large bequest. The man
who left it to me was a plain person of moderate property, and I myself
shall not learn until the next few days what I am to receive in addition
to his modest house.”

“The more it is, the more cordially I shall congratulate you,” cried the
violinist, and then looked back toward the other travellers.

Wolf did the same, and turned his horse. If he did not urge on the
loiterers the gate, which was closed at nightfall, would need to be
opened for them, for the five troopers who acted as escort had deemed
their duty done when Winzer was reached, and made themselves comfortable
in the excellent tavern there.

The carters had used the lash stoutly, yet it had been no easy matter
to advance rapidly. The rain had softened the road, and the horses and
beasts of burden were sorely wearied by the long trip from Brussels to
Ratisbon, which had been made in hurried days’ journeys. The train of
horsemen and wagons stretched almost beyond the range of vision, for it
comprised the whole world-renowned orchestra of the Emperor Charles, and
Queen Mary’s boy choir.

Only the leaders were absent. Gombert had left Brussels later than the
others, and hastened after them with post-horses, overtaking them about
an hour before, when he induced Appenzelder, the leader of the boy
choir, to enter his carriage, though the latter was reluctant to leave
the young singers who were intrusted to his care. As to the other
travellers, the Queen and Don Luis Quijada had made a great mistake in
their calculations--the number considerably exceeded a hundred. Neither
had thought of the women and children who accompanied the musicians.

Most of the women were the wives of the members of the orchestra, who
had availed themselves of this opportunity to see something of the
world. Others, from motives of love or jealousy, would not part from
their husbands. The little children had been taken because their
mothers, who were fond of travelling and, like their husbands, were
natives of all countries, possessed no relatives in Brussels who would
care for them.

The jealous spouses especially had not joined the party without cogent
reasons, for the mirth in the first long wagon, covered with a linen
tilt, was uproarious enough.

Wolf and his companion heard shrill laughter and loud shrieks echoing
from its dusky interior.

The younger men and the women who liked journeying were sitting in
motley confusion upon the straw which covered the bottom of the vehicle,
and the boisterous mirth of the travellers gave ample proof that the
huge jugs of wine carried with them as the Emperor’s provision for the
journey had been freely used.

In the second cart, an immense ark, swaying between four wheels and
drawn by a team of four horses, grave older artists sat silently
opposite to each other, all more or less exhausted by the continual
rocking motion of the long ride. These men and the other travellers were
joyfully surprised by the news that the goal of the journey was already
at hand. Pressing their heads together, they gazed out of the open linen
tilt which arched above the first cart or crowded to the little windows
of the coaches to see Ratisbon.

Even the old Neapolitan nurse, who was predicting future events from a
pack of cards, dropped them and peered out. But the noise in the second
tilted wagon was especially confused, for there the gay shouts of the
boy choir, only half of whom were on horseback, mingled with the loud
talking of the women, the screams of the babies, and the barking of the
dogs.

The groans of two young singers who were seriously ill were drowned by
the din and heeded by no one except the old drummer’s pitying wife, who
sometimes wiped the perspiration from the sufferers’ brows or supported
their heads.

Other carts, containing the musicians’ instruments, followed this tilted
wagon. Some members of the orchestra would not part with theirs, and
behind the saddle of many a mounted virtuoso or attendant was fastened a
violin case or a shapeless bag which concealed some other instrument.

A large number of musicians mounted on horses or mules surrounded the
two-wheeled cart in which sat Hernbeize of Ghent, the treasurer of the
orchestra, and his fat wife. The corpulent couple, squeezed closely
together, silent and out of humour, had taken no notice of each other or
their surrounding since Frau Olympia had presumed to drag her husband by
force out of the first wagon, where he was paying a visit to a clarionet
player’s pretty young wife.

Whenever Wolf appeared he urged the horsemen and drivers to greater
haste, and thus the musical caravan, with its unauthorized companions,
succeeded in passing through the gate ere it closed. Beyond it the
travellers were received by Quijada, the imperial valet, Adrian Dubois,
and several quartermasters, who meanwhile had provided lodgings.

The major-domo greeted the musicians with dignified condescension, Wolf
with familiar friendship. Master Adrian, the valet, also shook hands
cordially with him and Massi, the “first violin” of the orchestra.
Finally Don Luis rode up to Wolf and informed him that the Queen of
Hungary wished to speak to him early the next morning, and that he also
had something important to discuss at the earliest opportunity. Then he
listened to the complaints of the quartermasters.

These men, who performed their duties with great lack of consideration,
had supposed that they had provided for all the expected arrivals, but,
after counting heads, they discovered that the billets were sufficient
for only half the number. Their attempt to escape providing for the
wives was baffled by the vigorous interposition of the treasurer and by
a positive order from Quijada.

Of course, under these circumstances they were very glad to have Sir
Wolf Hartschwert return his billet--the room in the Crane allotted to
him by the valet was large enough to accommodate half a dozen women.

The nobleman returning to his home had no occasion to find shelter in a
tavern.

Yet, as he wished to remove the traces of the long ride ere he entered
his own house and appeared before the person for whose sake he had
gladly left Brussels, he asked Massi’s permission to use his room in the
Red Cock for a short time.

Leonhard Leitgeb, the landlord, and his bustling better half received
Wolf as a neighbour’s son and an old acquaintance. But, after they had
shown him and Massi to the room intended for them and gone downstairs
again, the landlady of the Cock shook her head, saying:

“He was always a good lad and a clever one, too, but even if a duke’s
coronet should fall upon the thin locks of the poor knight’s son I
should never take him for a real nobleman.”

“Better let that drop,” replied her husband. “Besides, the fine fellow
is of more consequence since he had the legacy. If he should come here
for our Kattl, I’ll wager you wouldn’t keep him waiting.”

“Indeed I wouldn’t,” cried the landlady, laughing. “But just hear what a
racket those soldiers are making again down below!”

Meanwhile Wolf was hurriedly attending to his outer man.

Massi had stretched himself on the thin cushion which covered the seat
of the wooden bench in the bay-window, and thrust his feet far out in
front of him.

As he watched the Ratisbon knight diligently use the little hand mirror
while arranging his smooth, fair locks, he straightened himself, saying:

“No offence, Sir Knight, but when I think of the radiant face with which
you gazed down into the valley of the Danube from the hill where you
stopped before sunset, and now see how zealously you are striving to
adorn your person, it seems to me that there must be in this good
city some one for whom you care more than for all you left behind in
Brussels. At your age, that is a matter of course, if there is a woman
in the case, as I suppose. I know very well what I should do if I were
in your place. Longing often urges me back to Spain like a scourge. I
have already told you why I left my dear wife there in our home. A few
more years in the service, and our savings and the pension together will
be enough to support us there and lay aside a little marriage dowry for
our daughter. When I have what is necessary, I shall turn my back on the
orchestra and the court of Brussels that very day, dear as music is to
me, and sure as I am that I shall never again find a leader like our
Gombert. You do not yet know with how sharp a tooth yearning rends the
soul of the man whom Fate condemns to live away from his family. This
place is your home, and dearer to you than any other, so build yourself
a snug nest here with the person you have in mind.”

“How gladly I would do so!” replied the young knight, “but whether I can
must be decided within the next few davs.”

“Inde-e-ed?” drawled Massi; then he bent his eyes thoughtfully upon the
floor for a short time, and, after calling Wolf by name in a tone of
genuine friendly affection, he frankly added: “Surely you know how dear
a comrade you are to me! Yet precisely for that reason I stick to my
counsel. It’s not only on account of the homesickness--I am, thinking
rather of your position at court--and, let me speak candidly, it is
unworthy of a nobleman and a musician of such ability. The regent is
graciously disposed toward you, and you praise her liberality, but
do you yourself know the name of the office which you fill? More than
enough is placed upon you, and yet, so far as I see, nothing complete.
They understand admirably how to make use of you. It would be well
if that applied solely to the musician. But sometimes she makes you
secretary, and you have to waste whole days in writing letters and do
penance for having learned so many languages; sometimes you must share
in the folly of arranging performances, and your wealth of knowledge is
industriously utilized in preparing mythological figures and devising
new ideas for the exhibitions at which we have to furnish the music.
This affords plenty of labour, but others reap the credit. Recently the
Bishop of Arras even asked you to write in German what he dictated in
French, although you are in the regent’s service, and just at that time
you were transposing the old church songs for the boy choir. I regret to
see you do such tradesmen’s work without adequate reward. Why, even if
her Majesty would give you a fat living or appoint you to the imperial
council which directs musical affairs in the Netherlands! Pardon me, Sir
Wolf! But give people an inch, and they take an ell, and your ever ready
obligingness will injure you, for the harder it is to win a thing the
higher its value becomes. You made yourself too cheap at court here
people will surely know how to put a higher value upon a man who
is equally skilful in Netherland, Italian, and German music. In
counterpoint you are little inferior to Maestro Gombert, and, besides,
you play as many instruments as you have fingers on your hands. We all
like to have you lead us, because you do it with such delicate taste
and comprehension, and, moreover, with a vigour which one would scarcely
expect from you. You will not lack patrons. Look around you here or
elsewhere for a position as leader of an orchestra. Goinbert, to relieve
himself a little, would like to have de Hondt come from Antwerp to
Brussels. His place would be the very one for you if you find nothing
worthy of you here, where you have a house of your own and other things
that bind you to the city.”

“Here I should probably be obliged to crowd somebody else out of one
in order to obtain a position,” replied Wolf, “and I am unwilling to do
so.”

“You are wrong,” cried the violinist. “The course of the world causes
the stronger--and that you are--to take precedence of the weaker. Learn
at last to give up this modest withdrawal and elbow your way forward!”

“Pressing and jostling are not in my nature;” replied Wolf with a slight
shrug of the shoulders. “Since I may hope to be relieved of anxiety
concerning my daily bread, I am disposed to leave the court and seek
quiet happiness in a more definite circle of duties at home. You see,
Massi, it is just the same with us human beings as with material things.
There is my man cutting the rope from yonder package with his sharp
knife. The contents are distributed in a trice, and yet it was tiresome
to collect them and pack them carefully. Thus it would need only a
word to separate myself from the court; but to join it again would be a
totally different affair. There have been numerous changes in this city
since I went away, and many a hand which pressed mine in farewell is
no longer here, or would perhaps be withdrawn, merely because I am a
Catholic and intend to stay here among the Protestants. Besides--lay the
roll on the table, Janche--besides, as you have already heard, the
final decision does not depend upon myself.--Take care, Jan. That little
package is breakable!”

This last exclamation was addressed to Wolf’s Netherland servant, who
was just unpacking his master’s leather bag.

Massi noticed that the articles taken out could scarcely be intended
for a man’s use, and, pointing to a piece of Flanders velvet, he gaily
remarked:

“So my guess was correct. Here, too, the verdict is to be pronounced by
beardless lips.” Wolf blushed like a girl, but, after the violinist had
waited a short time for the confirmation of his conjecture, he continued
more gravely:

“It ill befits me to intrude upon your secret. Every one must go his own
way, and I have wondered why a person who so readily renders a service
to others pursues his own path so unsocially. Will you ever let your
friend know what stirs your heart?”

“I should often have confided in you gladly,” replied Wolf, “but a
certain shyness always restrained me. How can others be interested in
what befalls a lonely, quiet fellow like me? It is not my habit to talk
much, but you will always find me ready to use hand and brain in behalf
of one who is as dear to me as you, Massi.”

“You have already given me proof of that,” replied the violinist, “and I
often marvel how you find time, without neglecting your own business, to
do so much for others with no payment except thanks. I thought you
would accomplish something great, because you paid no heed to women; but
probably you depend on other powers, for if it is a pair of beautiful
eyes whose glance is to decide so important a matter----”

“Never mind that,” interrupted Wolf beseechingly, raising his hand
soothingly. “I confess with Terentius that nothing human is strange
to me. As soon as the decision comes, I will tell you--but you
alone--several particulars. Now accept my thanks for your well-meant
counsel and the use of your room. I’ll see you again early to-morrow. I
promised Gombert and the leader of the boy choir to lend them a helping
hand, so we shall probably meet at the rehearsal.--Go to the stable,
Janche, and see that the groom has rubbed the bay down thoroughly. As
for the rolls and packages here----”

“I’ll help you carry them,” said the violinist, seizing his shoes; but
Wolf eagerly declined his assistance, and went out to ask the landlord
to let him have one of his men.

But the servants of the overcrowded Red Cock all had their hands full,
so the nine-year-old son of the Leitgeb couple and the cellar man’s two
somewhat younger boys, who had not yet gone to bed, were made bearers of
the parcels.

How eager they were to do something which suited grown people, and, when
Wolf described the place where they were to carry the articles, Fran
Leitgeb sympathizingly helped him, and charged the children to hold the
valuable packages very carefully. They must not spare the knocker in the
second story of the cantor house, for old Ursula’s hearing was no longer
the best, and since the day before yesterday--Kathl had brought the news
home--she had been ill. “Some rare luck,” the landlady continued, “will
surely follow the knight up to the Blombergs. The same old steep path,
leads there; but as to Wawer!--it would be improper to say Jungfrau
Barbara--you will surer open your eyes--” Here she was summoned to the
kitchen, and Wolf followed his little assistants into the street.




CHAPTER III.

The cantor house was only a few steps from the Red Cock, and Wolf knew
every stone in the street, which was named for the tavern. Yet that very
circumstance delayed him, for even the smallest trifle which had changed
during his absence attracted his attention.

He had already noticed at the familiar inn that the gay image of the
Madonna and Cluld, and the little lamp above, were no longer there. The
pictures of the saints had been removed from the public rooms, and even
the painting which had been impressed upon his memory from boyhood--like
a sign of the house--had vanished. A large red cock, crowing with
wide-open beak at the Apostle Peter, had been there.

This venerable work of an old artist ought to have been retained, no
matter what doctrine the Leitgebs now professed. Its disappearance
affected the knight unpleasantly.

It also induced him to see whether the Madonna with the swords in her
heart, which, at the time of his departure, had adorned the Ark, the
great house at the corner of the Haidplatz, had met with the same fate,
and this sacred witness of former days had likewise been sacrificed to
the iconoclasm of the followers of the new Protestant faith. This also
grieved him, and urged him to go from street to street, from church to
church, from monastery to monastery, from one of the chapels which
no great mansion in his native land lacked to another, in order to
ascertain what else religious fanaticism had destroyed; but he was
obliged to hasten if he wished to be received by those in his home whom
he most desired to see.

The windows of the second story in the Golden Cross, opposite to the
Ark, were brilliantly lighted. The Emperor Charles lodged there, and
probably his royal sister also. Wolf had given his heart to her with
the devotion with which he had always clung to every one to whom he was
indebted for any kindness. He knew her imperial brother’s convictions,
too, and when he saw at one of the windows a man’s figure leaning,
motionless against the casement with his hand pressed upon his brow,
he realized what deep indignation had doubtless seized upon him at the
sight of the changes which had taken place here during the five years of
his absence.

But Emperor Charles was not the man to allow matters which aroused his
wrath and strong disapproval to pass unpunished. Wolf suspected that the
time was not far distant when yonder monarch at the window, who had won
so many victories, would have a reckoning with the Smalcalds, the allied
Protestants of Germany, and his vivid imagination surrounded him with an
almost mystical power.

He would surely succeed in becoming the master of the Protestant
princes; but was the steel sword the right weapon to destroy this
agitation of the soul which had sprung from the inmost depths of
the German nature? He knew the firm, obstinate followers of the new
doctrine, for there had been a time when his own young mind had leaned
toward it.

Since those days, however, events had happened which had bound him
by indestructible fetters to the old faith. He had vowed to his dying
mother to remain faithful to the Holy Church and loyally to keep his
oath. It was not difficult for one of his modest temperament to be
content with the position of spectator of the play of life which he
occupied. He was not born for conflict, and from the seat to which he
had retired he thought he had perceived that the burden of existence was
easier to bear, and the individual not only obtained external comfort,
but peace of mind more speedily, if he left to the Church many things
which the Protestant was obliged to settle for himself. Besides, as
such, he would have missed many beautiful and noble things which the old
faith daily bestowed upon him, the artist.

People in Ratisbon held a different opinion. Defection from the Roman
Catholic Church, which seemed to him reprehensible, was considered here
a sacred duty, worthy of every sacrifice. This threatened to involve
him in fresh spiritual conflicts, and, as he dreaded such things as
nocturnal birds shun the sunlight, he stood still, thoughtfully asking
himself whether he ought not at once to give up the desire of striking
new roots into this perilous soil.

Only one thing really bound him to Ratisbon, and that was by no means
the house which he had inherited, but a very young girl, and, moreover,
a very changeable one, of whose development and life he had heard
nothing during his absence except that she had not become another’s
wife. Perhaps this girl, whose charm and musical talent, according
to his opinion, were unequalled in Ratisbon, had remained free solely
because she was keeping the promise made when, a child of sixteen, she
bade him farewell. She had told him, though only in her lively childish
fashion, that she would wait for him and become his wife when he
returned home a made man. Yet it now seemed that she had been as
sincerely in earnest in that youthful betrothal as he himself.

This fair hope crowded every scruple far into the shade. If Barbara had
kept her troth to him, he would reward her. Wherever he might build his
nest with her, he would be sure of the richest happiness. Therefore
he persisted in making his decision for the future depend upon her
reception.

The only question was whether it had not already grown too late for him
to visit her and her father, who went to bed with the chickens. But the
new clock in Jacobsplatz pealed only nine bell-like strokes through the
stillness of the evening, and, as he had sent his gifts in advance, he
was obliged to follow them.

He might now regard the cantor house, which was quickly gained, as his
own. Though it was now in the deepest darkness, he gazed up at the high,
narrow building, with the pointed arches of the windows and the bracket
which supported the image of St. Cecilia carved from sandstone, as
intently as if he could distinguish every defect in the windows, every
ornament carved in the ends of the beams.

The second story, which projected above the ground floor into the
street, was completely dark; but a faint glimmer of light streamed from
the little window over the spurge laurel tree, and--this was the main
thing--the bow window in the third story was still lighted.

She whom he sought was waiting there with her father, while beneath it
was the former abode of the precentor and organist and his wife, who had
reared Wolf, and whose heir, after the old man’s death, he had become.

He would take up his quarters in the room which he had occupied as a
scholar, where he had studied, practised music, trained himself in the
art of composition, and in leisure hours had even drawn and painted a
little.

Old Ursula, as he had learned from the legal document which informed him
of his inheritance, was taking care of the property bequeathed to him.
With what pleasure the old maid-servant, faithful soul, who had come
with him--then a little four-year-old boy--and his mother to Ratisbon
twenty-two years ago, would make a bed for him and again cook the
pancakes, which she knew to be his favourite dish!

The thought of the greeting awaiting him from her dispelled the timidity
with which he had set his foot on the first of the three steps that led
up to the threshold of the house. He had no occasion to use the knocker;
a narrow, long streak of light showed that, notwithstanding the late
hour, the outer door was ajar.

Now he heard an inner door open, and this again aroused the anxiety he
had just conquered. Suppose that he should find Wawerl below? Ardently
as he yearned for her to whom all the love of his heart belonged, this
meeting would have come too quickly. Yet she might very easily happen to
be in the lower story, for the lighted window beside the door belonged
to the little house chapel, and since her confirmation she had
undertaken to sweep it, clean the candlesticks and lamps, and keep them
in order, fill the vases on the little altar with blossoms, and adorn
the image of the Madonna with flowers on Lady day and other festivals.

How often he had helped the child and heard her father call her “his
little sacrist”!

The chapel here had gained greater importance to him when the Blombergs
placed above the altar the Madonna and Child which he, who tried all the
arts, had copied with his own hand from an ancient painting. This
had been in July; but when, on the Virgin’s Assumption day in August,
Barbara was twining a beautiful garland of summer flowers around it, and
he, with an overflowing heart, was helping her, his head accidentally
struck against hers, and to comfort her he compassionately kissed the
bruised spot. Only a short time ago she had frankly thrown her arms
around his neck if she wanted him to gratify a wish or forgive an
offence without ever receiving a response to her affection. This time he
had been the aggressor, and received an angry rebuff; during the little
scuffle which now followed, Wolf’s heart suddenly grew hot, and his kiss
fell upon her scarlet lips. The first was followed by several others,
until steps on the stairs parted the young lover from the girl, who
offered but a feeble resistance.

Now he remembered the incident, and his cheeks flushed again. Oh, if
to-day he should possess the right to have those refractory lips at his
disposal!

During the five months spent in Ratisbon after that attack in the chapel
he had more than once been bold enough to strive for more kisses, but
always in vain, and rarely without bearing away a sharp reprimand, for
Barbara had felt her slight resistance in the chapel as a grave offence.
She had permitted something forbidden under the eyes of the Virgin’s
image, and this had seemed to her so wicked that she had confessed it,
and not only been sternly censured, but had a penance imposed.

Barbara had not forgotten this, and had understood how to keep him aloof
with maidenly austerity until, on the evening before his departure, he
had hung around her neck the big gold thaler his godfather had given
him.

Then, obeying an impulse of gratitude, she had thrown her arms around
his neck; but even then she would not allow him to kiss her lips again.
Instead, she hastily drew back to examine the gold thaler closely,
praised its weight and beauty, and then promised Wolf that when she was
rich and he had become a great lord she would have a new goblet made for
him out of just such coins, like one which she had seen at the Wollers
in the Ark, the richest of her wealthy relatives.

As Wolf now recalled this promise it vexed him again.

What had he expected from that parting hour--the vow of eternal
fidelity, a firm betrothal, ardent kisses, and a tender embrace? But,
instead of obtaining even one of these beautiful things, he had become
involved in a dispute with Barbara because he desired to receive nothing
from her, and only claimed the right of showering gifts upon her later.

This had pleased her, and, when he urged her to promise to wait for him
and become his wife when he returned home a made man, she laughed gaily,
and declared that she liked him, and, if it should be he who obtained
for her what she now had in mind, she would be glad.

Then his loving heart overflowed, and with her hands clasped in his he
entreated her to give up these arrogant thoughts, be faithful to him,
and not make him wretched.

The words had poured so ardently, so passionately from the quiet, sedate
young man’s lips that the girl was thoroughly frightened, and wrenched
her hands from his grasp. But when she saw how deeply her struggling
hurt him, she voluntarily held out her right hand, exclaiming:

“Only succeed while you are absent sufficiently to build a house like
our old one in the Kramgasse, and when the roof is on and your knightly
escutcheon above the door we will move in together, and life will be
nothing but music and happiness.”

This was all that gave him the right to consider her as his betrothed
bride, for after a brief farewell and a few kisses of the hand flung to
him from the threshold, she had escaped to the little bow-windowed
room and thereby also evaded from the departing lover an impressive,
well-prepared speech concerning the duties of a betrothed couple.

Yet in Rome and Brussels Wolf had held fast to the conviction that a
beloved betrothed bride was awaiting him in Ratisbon.

So long as his foster-parents lived he had had news from them of the
Blombergs. After the death of the old couple, Barbara’s father had
answered in a very awkward manner the questions which he had addressed
to him in a letter, and his daughter wrote a friendly message under the
old captain’s signature. True, it was extremely brief, but few fiery
love letters ever made the recipient happier or were more tenderly
pressed to the lips.

The girl he loved still bore the name of Barbara Blomberg.

This outweighed a whole archive of long letters. The captain, who, for
the sake of fighting the infidels, had so sadly neglected his property
that his own house in the Kramgasse fell into the hands of his
creditors, had rented the second story in the cantor house. Barbara at
that time was very small, but now she had ceased to be a child, and,
after she devoted herself earnestly to acquiring the art of singing, the
old warrior had undertaken to keep the little chapel in order.

The task certainly seemed strangely ill-suited to the tall,
broad-shouldered man with the bushy eyebrows, long beard, and mustache
twisted stiffly up at the ends, who had obtained in Tunis and during the
Turkish war the reputation of being one of the most fearless heroes, and
carried away severe wounds; but he knew how to make scoffers keep their
distance, and did not trouble himself at all about other people.

Regularly every evening he went down the stairs and performed the duty
he had undertaken with the punctilious care of a neat housewife.

He was a devout man, and did his work there in the hope of pleasing the
Holy Virgin, because the reckless old warrior was indebted to her for
more than one deliverance from impending death, and because he trusted
that she would repay it to him in his child.

Besides, his income was not large enough for him to keep a maid-servant
of his own, and he could not expect old Ursel, who had worked for the
precentor and his wife, and performed the roughest labour in the third
story for a mere “thank you,” to take care of the chapel also. She had
plenty to do, and besides she had been a Protestant three years, and
took the Lord’s Supper in a different form.

This would have induced him to break off every connection with his old
friend’s maid-servant had not his kind, grateful heart forbidden him to
hurt her feelings. Besides, she was almost indispensable to his daughter
and himself; it was difficult enough, in any case, for the nobly born
captain to meet the obligations imposed by his position.

He now received only a very small portion of the profits of the lumber
trade which had supported his ancestors, his father, and himself very
handsomely, for he had been compelled to mortgage his share in the
business.

Notwithstanding the title of “Captain” with which his imperial commander
had honoured him when he received his discharge, the pension he had was
scarcely worth mentioning, and, besides, it was very irregularly paid.
Therefore the father and daughter had tried to obtain some means of
earning money which could be kept secret from their fellow-citizens.
The “Captain” busied himself with tracing coats-of-arms, ornaments, and
inscriptions upon tin goblets, mugs, tankards, and dishes. Barbara, when
she had finished her exercises in singing, washed fine laces. This
was done entirely in secret. A certain Frau Lerch, who when a girl
had served Barbara’s dead mother as waiting maid, and now worked as
a dressmaker for the most aristocratic women in Ratisbon, privately
obtained this employment. It was partly from affection for the young
lady whom she had tended when a child; but the largest portion of
Barbara’s earnings returned to her, for she cut for the former all the
garments she needed to appear among her wealthy relatives and young
companions at dances, musical entertainments, banquets, and excursions
to the country. True, Frau Lerch, who was a childless woman, worked very
cheaply for her, and, when she heard that Barbara had again been the
greatest beauty, it pleased her, and she saw her seed ripening.

What a customer the vain darling, who was very ambitious, promised
to become in the future as the wife of a rich aristocrat! She would
undoubtedly be that. There was absolute guarantee of it in her
marvellously beautiful head, with its abundant golden hair, her
magnificent figure, which--she could not help knowing it--was unequalled
in Ratisbon, and her nightingale voice.

Even old Blomberg, who kept aloof from the meetings of his distinguished
fellow-citizens, but, on the other hand, when his supply of money would
permit, enjoyed a drinking bout at the tavern with men of the sword all
the more, rejoiced to hear his daughter’s rare gifts lauded. The use of
the graver was thoroughly distasteful and unsuited to his rank; but even
the most laborious work gained a certain charm for his paternal heart
when, while wiping the perspiration from his brow, he thought of what
his diligence would allow him to devote to the adornment and instruction
of his daughter.

He preferred to be alone at home, and his reserved, eccentric nature had
caused his relatives to shun his house, which doubtless seemed to them
contemptibly small.

Barbara endured this cheerfully, for, though she had many relatives
and acquaintances among the companions of her own age, she possessed no
intimate friend.

As a child, Wolf had been her favourite playmate, but now visits from
her aunts and cousins would only have interrupted her secret work, and
disturbed her practice of singing.

When Wolf entered the house, the captain had just left the chapel. He
did not notice the returning owner, for people must have made their way
into the quiet dwelling. At least he had heard talking in the entry of
the second story, where usually it was even more noiseless than in his
lodgings in the third, since it was tenanted only by old Ursel, who was
now confined to her bed.

Wolf saw Barbara’s father, whose height surpassed the stature of
ordinary men by a head, hurrying up the stairs. It was a strange, and,
for children, certainly an alarming, sight--his left leg, which had
been broken by a bullet from a howitzer, had remained stiff, and, as
he leaped up three stairs at a time, he stretched his lean body so far
forward that it seemed as though he could not help losing his balance
at the next step. He was in haste, for he thought that at last he could
again acquit himself manfully and cope with one or rather with two or
three of the burglars who, since the Duke of Bavaria had prohibited the
conveyance of provisions into Ratisbon as a punishment for its desertion
of the Catholic Church, had pursued their evil way in the city.

He first discovered with what very small ill-doers he had to deal when
he held the little lamp toward them, and, to his sincere vexation, found
that they were only little boys, who, moreover, were the children of
honest folk, and therefore could scarcely be genuine scoundrels.

Yet it could hardly be any laudable purpose which brought them at so
late an hour to the cantor house, and therefore, with the intention of
turning the serious attack into a mirthful one; he shouted in a harsh
voice the gibberish which he had compounded of scraps of all sorts of
languages, and whose effect upon unruly youngsters he had tested to his
own amusement.

As his rough “Larum gardum quantitere runze punze ke hi voi la” now
reached the little ones, the impression was far deeper than he had
intended, for the cellar man’s youngest son, a little fellow six years
old, first shrieked aloud, and, when the terrible old man’s long arms
barred his way, he began to cry piteously.

This troubled the kind-hearted giant, who was really fond of children,
and, ere the little lad was aware of it, the captain’s free left hand
grasped the waistband of his little leather breeches and lifted him into
the air.

The swift act doubled the terror and anguish of the struggling little
wight.

As the strong man held him on his arm he fought bravely with his fat
little fists and his sturdy little legs. But though in the unequal
conflict the boy pitilessly pulled the powerful monster’s grayishy
yellow imperial and bushy mustache, and the captain recognised the child
from the Red Cock as one of the rascals who often shouted their nickname
of “Turkey gobbler” after his tall figure, conspicuous from its height
and costume, he strove with honest zeal to soothe the little one.

His deep voice, meanwhile, sounded so gentle and friendly, and his
promise to give him a piece of spice cake which he was bringing home
to Ursel to sweeten the disagreeable taste of her medicine produced
so soothing an influence, that little Hans at last looked up at him
trustingly and hopefully.

The cellar man’s oldest son, who had violently assaulted the old
gentleman to release his little brother, now stood penitently before
him, and the landlord’s boy related, in somewhat confused but perfectly
intelligible words, the object of their coming, and in whose name they
were bringing the roll and yonder little package to old Ursel.

The story sounded humble enough, but as soon as the captain had set
little Hans on his feet and bent curiously over the forerunners of the
dear friend, which had been placed on the little bench by the door,
the three boys dashed down the stairs, and the shrill voice of the
landlord’s son shrieked from the lowest step one “Turkey gobbler” and
“Pope’s slave” after another.

“Satan’s imps!” shouted the old man; but the outer door, which banged
below him, showed that pursuit of the naughty mockers would result to
his disadvantage. Then as, with an angry shake of the head, he drew back
from the banisters, he saw his daughter’s playmate.

How dear the latter was to him, and how fully his aged heart had
retained its capacity of feeling, were proved by the reception which he
gave the returning knight. The injury just inflicted seemed to have been
entirely forgotten. With tears in his eyes and a voice tremulous with
deep emotion, he drew Wolf toward him, kissing first his head, which
reached only to his lips, then his cheeks and brow. Then, with youthful
vivacity, he expressed his pleasure in seeing him again, and, without
permitting Wolf to speak, he repeatedly exclaimed:

“And my Wawerl, and Ursel in there! There’ll be a jubilee!”

When Wolf had at last succeeded in returning his old friend’s greeting
and then expressed a wish, first of all, to clasp the faithful old
maid-servant’s hand, the old gentleman’s beaming face clouded, and he
said, sighing:

“What has not befallen us here since you went away, my dear Wolf! My
path has been bordered with tombstones as poplars line the highway.
But we will let the dead rest. Nothing can now disturb their peace. Old
Ursel, too, is longing for the end of life, and we ought not to grudge
it to her. Only I dread the last hour, and still more the long eternity
which will follow it, for the good, patient woman entered the snare of
the Satanic Protestant doctrine, and will not hear of taking the holy
sacrament.”

Wolf begged him to admit him at once, but Blomberg declared that, after
the attack of apoplexy which she had recently had, one thing and another
might happen if she should so unexpectedly see the man to whom her whole
heart clung. Wolf would do better first to surprise the girl upstairs,
who had no suspicion of his presence. He, Blomberg, must look after the
old woman now. He would carry those things--he pointed to the parcels
which the boys had left--into the young nobleman’s old room. Ursel had
always kept it ready for his return, as though she expected him daily.
This suited Wolf, only he insisted upon having his own way about the
articles he had brought, and took them upstairs with him.

He would gladly have greeted the faithful nurse of his childhood at
once, yet it seemed like a fortunate dispensation that, through the old
man’s delay below, his wish to have his first meeting with the woman he
loved without witnesses should be fulfilled.




CHAPTER IV.

In spite of the darkness and the zigzag turns of the stairs, Wolf was so
familiar with every corner of the old house that he did not even need to
grope his way with his hand.

He found the door of the Blomberg lodgings open. Putting down in the
anteroom whatever might be in his way while greeting Barbara, and
carrying the roll of velvet under his arm and a little box in his
pocket, he entered the chamber which the old man called his artist
workshop. It was in total darkness, but through the narrow open door in
the middle of the left wall one could see what was going on in Barbara’s
little bow-windowed room. This was quite brightly lighted, for she was
ironing and crimping ruffs for the neck, small lace handkerchiefs, and
cuffs.

The light required for this purpose was diffused by a couple of tallow
candles and also by the coals which heated the irons.

As she bent over the glow, it shone into her beautiful face and upon her
magnificent fair hair, which rippled in luxuriant confusion about her
round head or fell in thick waves to her hips. The red kerchief which
had confined it was lying on the floor. Another had slipped from her
neck and was hanging on the corner of the ironing board. Her stockings
had lost their fastenings and slipped down to her feet, revealing limbs
whose whiteness and beauty of form vied with the round arms which, after
holding the iron near her hot cheeks, she moved with eager diligence.

The image of a vivacious, early developed child had impressed itself
upon Wolf’s mind. Now he stood before a maiden in the full bloom of her
charms, whose superb symmetry of figure surprised and stirred him to the
depths of his nature.

In spite of her immature youth, he had cherished her in his inmost
heart. Youth, she confronted him as an entirely new and doubly desirable
creature. The quiet longing which had mastered him was transformed into
passionate yearning, but he restrained it by exerting all the strength
of will peculiar to him, for a voice within cried out that he was too
insignificant for this marvellous maiden.

But when she dipped the tips of her fingers into the dainty little bowl,
which he had once given her for a birthday present, sprinkled the linen
with water, and meanwhile sang in fresh, clear notes the ‘ut, re, me,
fa, sol, la’ of Perissone Cambio’s singing lesson, new wonder seized
him. What compass, what power, what melting sweetness the childish voice
against whose shrillness his foster-father and he himself had zealously
struggled now possessed! Neither songstress nor member of the boy
choir whom he had heard in Italy or the Netherlands could boast of such
bell-like purity of tone! He was a connoisseur, and yet it seemed
as though every tone which he heard had received the most thorough
cultivation.

Who in Ratisbon could have been her teacher? To whom did she owe this
masterly training? As if by a miracle, he knew not whether from looking
or listening, he found a combination of notes which he had long been
seeking for the motet on which he was working. When he had registered
it, and she sang a few passages from it, what an exquisite delight
awaited him! But what should he do now? Ought he to surprise her in this
way? It would certainly have been proper to be first announced by her
father; but he could not bring himself even to stir a foot. Beads of
perspiration stood upon his brow. Panting for breath, he seized his
handkerchief to wipe it, and in doing so the roll of velvet which he had
held under his arm fell on the floor.

Wolf stooped, and, ere he had straightened himself again, he heard
Barbara call in a questioning tone, “Father?” and saw her put down the
iron and stand listening.

Then, willing or not, he was obliged to announce his presence, and, with
a timid “It is I, Wolf,” he approached the little bow-windowed room and
hesitatingly crossed the threshold.

“Wolf, my tame Wolf,” she repeated gaily, without being in the least
concerned about the condition of her dress. “I knew that we should soon
meet again, for, just think of it! I dreamed of you last night. I was
entering a golden coach. It was very high, so I put my foot on your
hand, and you lifted me in.”

Then, without the least embarrassment, she held out her right hand, but
slapped his fingers smartly when he passionately endeavoured to raise it
to his lips.

Yet the blow was not unkindly meant, for even while he drew back she
voluntarily clasped both his hands, scrutinized him intently from head
to foot, and said calmly:

“Welcome to the old home, Sir Knight!” Then, laughing gaily, she added:
“Why, such a thing is unprecedented! Not a feature, not a look is unlike
what it used to be! And yet you’ve been roaming five years in foreign
lands! Changes take place--only look at me!--changes take place more
swiftly here in Ratisbon. How you stare at me! I thought so! Out with
it! Hasn’t the feather-head of those days become quite a charming young
lady?”

Now Wolf would gladly have made as many flattering speeches as she could
desire, but his tongue refused to obey him. The new meeting was too
unlike his expectation. The sight of the self-conscious woman who,
in her wonderful beauty, stood leaning with folded arms on the
ironing-table stirred his heart and senses too strongly.

Standing motionless, he strove for words, while his eyes revealed
plainly enough the passionate rapture which agitated his soul. Barbara
perceived what was passing in his thoughts, and also noticed how her
dress had become disarranged during her work.

Flushing slightly, she pursed up her lips as if to whistle, and with
her head thrust forward she blew into the air in his direction. Then,
shaking her finger at him, she hastily sat down on the chest beside the
fireplace, wound the kerchief which had fallen off closer around her
neck, and, without the least embarrassment, pulled up her stockings.

“What does it matter!” she cried with a slight shrug of the shoulders.
“How often we two have waded together in water above our knees, like the
storks! And yet such a thing turns the head of a youth who has returned
from foreign lands a made man, and closes his bearded lips! Have you
given me even a single honest word of welcome? That’s the way with all
of you! And you? If you stand there already like a dumb sign-post, how
will it be when I thoroughly turn your head like all the rest with my
singing?”

“I’ve heard you already!” he answered quickly; “magical, bewildering,
magnificent! Who in the world wrought this miracle with your voice?”

“There we have it!” she cried, laughing merrily and clapping her hands.
“To make you speak, one need only allude distantly to music. That, too,
has remained unchanged, and I am glad, for I have much to ask you in
relation to it. I can learn many things from you still. But what have
you there in your hand? Is it anything pretty from Brabant?” This
question flowed from her lips with coaxing tenderness, and she passed
her soft hand swiftly over his cheek.

How happy it made him!

Hitherto he had been the receiver--nay, an unfair taker--but now he was
to become the giver and she would be pleased with his present.

As if relieved from a nightmare, he now told her that he had gone from
Rome, through the Papal Legate Contarini, whom he had accompanied to
Italy as a secretary skilled in German and music--to the imperial
court, where he now enjoyed the special favour of the Regent of the
Netherlands, the widowed Queen of Hungary; that the royal lady, the
sister of the Emperor Charles, had chosen him to be director of her
lessons in singing, and also permitted him to write German letters for
her; and what assistance worthy of all gratitude he had enjoyed through
the director of the imperial musicians, Gombert, the composer and leader
of the royal orchestra, and his colleague Appenzelder, who directed the
Queen’s boy choir.

At the mention of these names, Barbara listened intently. She had
sung several of Gombert’s compositions, and was familiar with one of
Appenzelder’s works.

When she learned that both must have arrived in Ratisbon several
hours before, she anxiously asked Wolf if he would venture to make her
acquainted with these great masters.

Wolf assented with joyous eagerness, while Barbara’s cheeks crimsoned
with pleasure at so valuable a promise.

Yet this subject speedily came to a close, for while talking Wolf had
ripped the linen cover in which the roll of velvet was sewed, and, as
soon as he unfolded the rich wine-coloured material, Barbara forgot
everything else, and burst into loud exclamations of pleasure and
admiration. Then, when Wolf hastened out and with hurrying fingers
opened the little package he had brought and gave her the costly fur
which was to serve as trimming for the velvet jacket, she again laughed
gleefully, and, ere Wolf was aware of it, she had thrown her arms around
his neck and kissed him on both cheeks.

He submitted as if dazed, and did not even regain his senses
sufficiently to profit by what she had granted him with such unexpected
liberality. Nor did she allow him to speak as she loosed her arms from
his neck, for, with a bewitching light in her large, blue eyes, fairly
overflowing with grateful tenderness, she cried:

“You dear, dear, kind little Wolf! To think that you should have
remembered me so generously! And how rich you must be! If I had become
so before you, I should have given myself a dress exactly like this.
Now it’s mine, just as though it had dropped from the sky. Wine-coloured
Flanders velvet, with a border of dark-brown marten fur! I’ll parade in
it like the Duchess of Bavaria or rich Frau Fugger. Holy Virgin! if that
isn’t becoming to my golden hair! Doesn’t it just suit me, you little
Wolf and great spendthrift? And when I wear it at the dance in the New
Scale or sing in it at the Convivium musicum, my Woller cousins and the
Thun girl will turn yellow with envy.”

Wolf had only half listened to this outburst of delight, for he
had reserved until the last his best offering--a sky-blue turquoise
breastpin set with small diamonds. It brought him enthusiastic thanks,
and Barbara even allowed him to fasten the magnificent ornament with his
own fingers, which moved slowly and clumsily enough.

Then she hurried into her chamber to bring the hand-mirror, and when in
an instant she returned and, at her bidding, he held the shining glass
before her, she patted his cheeks with their thin, fair, pointed beard,
and called him her faithful little Wolf, her clear, stupid pedant and
Satan in person, who would fill her mind with vanity.

Finally, she laid the piece of velvet over the back of a chair, let it
fall down to the floor, and threw the bands of fur upon it. Every graver
word, every attempt to tell her what he expected from her, the girl
cut short with expressions of gratitude and pleasure until her father
returned from the suffering Ursel.

Then, radiant with joy, she showed the old man her new treasures, and
the father’s admiration and expressions of gratitude were not far behind
the daughter’s.

It seemed as though Fate had blessed the modest rooms in Red Cock Street
with its most precious treasures.

It might be either Wolf’s return, the hopes for his daughter which
were associated with it in the crippled old warrior’s heart, or the
unexpected costly gifts, to which Wolf had added for his old friend a
Netherland drinking vessel in the form of a silver ship, which had moved
the old gentleman so deeply, but at any rate he allowed himself to be
tempted into an act of extravagance, and, in an outburst of good spirits
which he had not felt for a long time, he promised Wolf to fetch
from the cellar one of the jugs of wine which he kept there for his
daughter’s wedding.

“Over this liquid we will open our hearts freely to each other, my boy,”
 he said. “The night is still long, and even at the Emperor’s court there
is nothing better to be tasted. My dead mother used to say that there
are always more good things in a poor family which was once rich than in
a rich one which was formerly poor.”




CHAPTER V.

The captain limped out into the cellar, but Barbara was already standing
behind the table again, moving the irons.

“When I am rich,” she exclaimed, in reply to Wolf, who asked her to stop
her work in this happy hour and share the delicious wine with him and
her father, “I shall shun such maid-servant’s business. But what else
can be done? We have less money than we need to keep up our position,
and that must be remedied. Besides, a neatly crimped ruff is necessary
if a poor girl like me is to stand beside the others in the singing
rehearsal early to-morrow morning. Poor folks are alike everywhere,
and, so long as I can do no better--but luck will come to me, too, some
day--this right hand must be my maid. Let it alone, or my iron will burn
your fingers!”

This threat was very nearly fulfilled, for Wolf had caught her right
hand to hold it firmly while he at last compelled her to hear that his
future destiny depended upon her decision.

How much easier he had expected to find the wooing! Yet how could it
be otherwise? Every young man in Ratisbon was probably courting this
peerless creature. No doubt she had already rebuffed many another as
sharply as she had just prevented him from seizing her hand. If her
manner had grown more independent, she had learned to defend herself
cleverly.

He would first try to assail her heart with words, and they were at his
disposal in black and white. He had placed in the little box with the
breastpin a piece of paper on which he had given expression to his
feelings in verse. Hitherto it had remained unnoticed and fluttered
to the ground. Picking it up, he introduced his suit, after a brief
explanation, by reading aloud the lines which he had composed in
Brussels to accompany his gifts to her.

It was an easy task, for he had painted rather than written his poetic
homage, with beautiful ornaments on the initial letters, and in the most
careful red and black Gothic characters, which looked like print. So,
with a vivacity of intonation which harmonized with the extravagance of
the poetry, he began:

       “Queen of my heart wert thou in days of old,
        Beloved maid, in childhood’s garb so plain;
        I bring thee velvet now, and silk and gold
        Though I am but a poor and simple swain
        That in robes worthy of thee may be seen
        My sovereign, of all thy sex the queen.”

Barbara nodded pleasantly to him, saying: “Very pretty. Perhaps you
might arrange your little verse in a duo, but how you must have
taxed your imagination, you poor fellow, to transform the flighty
good-for-nothing whom you left five years ago into a brilliant queen!”

“Because, even at that time,” he ardently exclaimed. “I had placed you
on the throne of my heart, because the bud already promised--Yet no! In
those days I could not suspect that it would unfold into so marvellous
a rose. You stand before me now more glorious than I beheld you in the
most radiant of all my dreams, and therefore the longing to possess you,
which I could never relinquish, will make me appear almost insolently
bold. But it must be risked, and if you will fulfil the most ardent
desire of a faithful heart--”

“Gently, my little Wolf, gently,” she interposed soothingly. “If I am
right, you mounted our narrow stairs to seek a wife and, when my father
returns, you will ask for my hand.”

“That I will,” the young knight declared with eager positiveness. “Your
‘Yes’ or ‘No,’ Wawerl, is to me the decree of Fate, to which even the
gods submit without opposition.”

“Indeed?” she answered, uttering the word slowly, with downcast eyes.
Then suddenly drawing herself to her full height, she added with a
graver manner than he had ever seen her wear: “It is fortunate that
I have learned the stories of the gods which are so popular in the
Netherlands. If any one else should come to me with such pretences,
I would scarcely believe that he had honest intentions. You are in
earnest, Wolf, and wish to make me your wife. But ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ can not
be spoken as quickly as you probably imagine. You were always a good,
faithful fellow, and I am sincerely attached to you. But have I even
the slightest knowledge of what you obtained abroad or what awaits you
here?”

“Wawerl!” he interrupted reproachfully. “Would I as an honest man
seek your hand if I had not made money enough to support a wife whose
expectations were not too extravagant? You can not reasonably doubt
that, and now, when the most sacred of bonds is in question, it ought--”

“It ought, you think, to satisfy me?” she interrupted with confident
superiority. “But one of two things must follow this sacred
bond-happiness or misery in the earthly life which is entered from the
church steps. I am tired of the miserable starving and struggling, my
dear Wolf. Marriage must at least rid me of these gloomy spectres. My
father will not let you leave soon the good wine he allows himself and
you to enjoy--you know that. Tell him how you are situated at the
court, and what prospects, you have here in Ratisbon or elsewhere;
for instance, I would gladly go to the magnificent Netherlands with my
husband. Inform yourself better, too, of the amount of your inheritance.
The old man will take me into his confidence early to-morrow morning.
But I will confess this to you now: The most welcome husband to me would
be a zealous and skilful disciple of music, and I know that wish will
be fulfilled with you. If, perhaps, you are already what I call a
successful man, we will see. But--I have learned that--no happiness
will thrive on bread and water, and even a modest competence, as it is
called, won’t do for me.”

“But Wawerl,” he interrupted dejectedly, “what could be better than
true, loyal love? Just hear what I was going to tell you, and have not
yet reached.”

But Barbara would not listen, cutting his explanation short with the
words:

“All that is written as distinctly on the tender swain’s face as if I
had it before me in black letter, but unfortunately it has as little
power to move me to reckless haste as the angry visage into which your
affectionate one is now transformed. The Scripture teaches us to prove
before we retain. Yet if, on this account, you take me for a woman whose
heart and hand can be bought for gold, you are mistaken. Worthy Peter
Schlumperger is constantly courting me. And I? I have asked him to wait,
although he is perhaps the richest man in the city. I might have Bernard
Crafft, too, at any time, but he, perhaps, is as much too young as Herr
Peter is too old, yet, on the other hand, he owns the Golden Cross, and,
besides, has inherited a great deal of money and a flourishing business.
I keep both at a distance, and I did the same--only more rigidly--last
year when the Count Palatine von Simmern made me proposals which would
have rendered me a rich woman, but only aroused my indignation. I dealt
more indulgently with the Ratisbon men, but I certainly shall take
neither of them, for they care more for the wine in the taproom than the
most exquisite pleasures which music offers, and, besides, they are foes
of our holy faith, and Herr Schlumperger is even one of those who most
zealously favour the heretical innovations.”

Here she hesitated and her eyes met his with distrustful keenness as she
asked in an altered tone:

“And you? Have not you returned to the false doctrines with which your
boyish head was bewildered in the school of poetry?”

“I confided to you then,” he exclaimed, deeply hurt, “the solemn vow I
made to my poor mother ere she closed her eyes in death.”

“Then that obstacle is removed,” Barbara answered in a more gentle tone,
“but I will not take back even a single word of what I have said about
other matters. I am not like the rest of the girls. My father--Holy
Virgin!--how much too late he was born! Among the Crusaders this
fearless hero, whom the pepper-bags here jeer at as a ‘Turkey gobbler,’
would have been sure of every honour. How ill-suited he is for any
mercantile business, on the other hand, he has unfortunately proved.
Wherever he attempted anything, disappointment followed disappointment.
To fight in Tunis against the crescent, he let our flourishing lumber
trade go to ruin! And my mother! How young I was when her dead body was
borne out of the house, yet I can still see the haughty woman--whose
image I am said to be--in her trailing velvet robe, with plumes waving
amid the curls arranged in a towering mass upon her head. She was
dressed in that way when the men came to sell our house in the Kramgasse
at auction. She must have been one of the women under whose management,
as a matter of course, the household is neglected.”

“How can you talk so about your own mother?” Wolf interrupted in a
somewhat reproachful tone.

“Because we are not here to flatter the dead or to speak falsely to
each other, but to understand how matters are between us,” she answered
gravely. “How you are constituted is best known to yourself, but it
seems to me that while far away you have formed a totally false opinion
of me, whom you placed upon the throne of your heart, and I wish to
correct it, that you may not plunge into misfortune like a deluded
simpleton and drag me with you. Where, as in my case, so many things are
different from what the good and humble would desire them to be, it is
not very pleasant to open one’s whole heart to another, and there is
no one else in the world for whom I would do it. Perhaps I shall not
succeed at all, for often enough I am incomprehensible to myself. I
shall understand myself most speedily if I bring before my mind my
father’s and my mother’s nature, and recall the ancient saying that
young birds sing like the old ones. My father--I love him in spite of
all his eccentricities and weaknesses. Dear me! he needs me so much, and
would be miserable without me. Though he is a head taller than you, he
has remained a child.”

“But a good, kind-hearted one!” Wolf interrupted with warm affection.

“Of course,” Barbara eagerly responded; “and if I have inherited from
him anything which is ill-suited to me, it is the fearless courage
which does not beseem us women. We progress much farther if we hold back
timidly. Therefore, often as it impels me to resistance, I yield unless
it is too strong for me. Besides, but for your interruption, I should
have said nothing about my father. What concerns us I inherited from my
mother, and, as I mean kindly toward you, this very heritage compels me
to warn you against marrying me if you are unable to support me so that
I can make a good appearance among Ratisbon wives. Moreover, poor church
mouse though I am, I sometimes give them one thing and another to
guess, and I haven’t far to travel to learn what envy is. In my present
position, however, compassion is far more difficult to bear than
ill-will. But I by no means keep out of the way on that account. I must
be seen and heard if I am to be happy, and I shall probably succeed so
long as my voice retains the melting tone which is now peculiar to it.
Should anything destroy that, there will be a change. Then--I know this
in advance--I shall tread in the footsteps of my mother, who had no
means of satisfying her longing for admiration except her pretty face,
her beautiful figure, and the finery which she stole from the poverty of
her husband, and her only child. How you are staring at me again! But
I can not forget that now; for, had it not been so, we should still be
living in our own house as a distinguished family of knightly rank, and
I should have no need to spend my best hours in secretly washing laces
for others--yes, for others, Wolf--to gain a wretched sum of which
even my father must be ignorant. You do not know how we are obliged to
economize, and yet I can only praise the pride of my father, who induced
me to return the gifts which the Council sends to the house by the town
clerk when I sing in the Convivium musicum. But what a pleasure it is
to show the bloated fellow the door when he pulls out the linen purse!
True, many things must be sacrificed to do it, and how hard that often
is can not be described. I would not bear it long. But, if I were your
wife and you had only property enough for a modest competence, you would
scarcely fare better, through my fault, than my poor father. That would
surely be the result”--she raised her voice in passionate eagerness as
she spoke:

“I know myself. As for the immediate future, I feel that the
ever-increasing longing for better days and the rank which is my due
will kill me if I do not satisfy it speedily. I shall never be content
with any half-way position, and I fear you can not offer me more. Talk
with my father, and think of it during the night. Were I in your place,
I would at once resign the wish to win a person like me, for if you
really love me as ardently as it seems, you will receive in exchange
only a lukewarm liking for your person and a warm interest in what you
can accomplish; but in other respects, far worse than nothing--peril
after peril. But if you will be reasonable and give up your suit, I
shall not blame you a moment. How bewildered you still stare at me!
But there comes father, and I must finish my work before the irons get
cold.”

Wolf gazed after her speechlessly, while she withdrew behind the table
as quietly as if they had been discussing the most commonplace things.




CHAPTER VI.

The old captain blew the dust from the wine flagon and carefully removed
the seal. His presence prevented Wolf from renewing the interrupted
conversation.

Reflection doubtless warned him that it would be a dangerous venture to
enter the same life-boat with this woman, yet how bewitchingly beautiful
she had seemed to him in her proud superiority, in the agitation of soul
aroused by the yearning for a fairer fate! Have her he must, even though
he was permitted to call her his own but for a year, a month, an hour.

Many of her words had been harsh and apparently unfeeling, yet how noble
must be the soul of this young creature who, for the sake of being loyal
to truth, the pure source of everything grand and lofty, paid no heed to
much that is usually sacred to human beings!

But Barbara’s conduct during the next hour appeared to belie this
opinion of the man who loved her, for scarcely had her father sat down
with the knight before the venerable wine flagon than she flung down the
smoothing iron, hastily piled the finished articles one above another,
and then, without heeding the parchment on which Wolf’s verses were
written, rolled up the ruby velvet. Directly after, with the package
under her arm, she wished the men a merry drinking bout, and added that
poor Ursel might need her. Besides, she wanted to show her the beautiful
material, which would please the faithful soul.

Then, without even pausing at the rooms in the second story, she hurried
swiftly down the stairs into the street.

She was carrying Wolf’s gift to Frau Lerch, her dressmaker.

The Grieb, where the latter lived as wife of the keeper of the house,
was only a few steps distant. If the skilful woman, who was indebted to
her for many a customer, began the work of cutting at once, her cousins,
the Wollers, could help her the next day with the sewing. True, these
were the very girls who would “turn yellow with rage” at the sight of
the velvet, but precisely because these rich girls had so many things
of which she was deprived she felt that, in asking their aid, she was
compelling Fate to atone for an injustice.

Haste was necessary for, at the first glance at the velvet, she had
determined to wear it at the next dance in the New Scales, and she also
saw distinctly in imagination the person whose attention she desired to
attract.

True, the recruiting officer sent to Ratisbon, of whom she was thinking,
was by no means a more acceptable suitor, but a handsome fellow, a scion
of a noble family, and, above all, an excellent dancer.

She did not love him--nay, she was not even captivated by him like
so many others. But, if his heart throbbed faster for any one, it was
Barbara. Yet perhaps his glances strayed almost as frequently to one
other maiden. The velvet gown should now decide whether he gave the
preference to her or to pretty Elspet Zohrer--of course, only in the
dance--for she would never have accepted him as a serious suitor.

Besides, the young noble, Pyramus Kogel, himself probably thought of no
such folly.

It was very different with Wolf Hartschwert. She had been told the small
amount of his inheritance long before, and on that account she would
have been obliged to refuse him positively at once, yet the affectionate
relations existing between them must not be clouded. He might still
become very useful to her and, besides, the modest companion of her
childhood was dear to her. She would have sincerely regretted an
irreparable breach with him.

Her father indulged her in every respect, only he strictly forbade his
beautiful child to leave the house alone after sunset. Therefore Barbara
had not told him the real object of her visit. She now had no occasion
to fear his following her.

Yet she made all possible haste, and, as she found Frau Lerch at home,
and the skilful little woman was instantly at her service, she crowded
into the space of an hour the many points about the cutting which were
to be discussed.

Then she set out on her way home, expecting to traverse the short
distance swiftly and without delay; but, when she had gone only a few
paces from the Grieb, a tall man came toward her.

To avoid him she crossed nimbly to the other side of the dark little
street, but just where it turned into Red Cock Street he suddenly barred
her way. She was startled, but the oft-proved courage of the Blomberg
race, to which she had just alluded, really did animate her, and, with
stern decision, she ordered her persecutor to stand aside.

He, however, was not to be intimidated, but exclaimed as joyously as
though some great piece of good fortune had befallen him:

“Thanks for accosting me, Jungfrau Barbara, for, though the words are
harsh, they prove that, in spite of the darkness here, my eyes did not
deceive me. Heaven be praised!”

Then the girl recognised the recruiting officer and excellent dancer
of whom she had just been thinking in connection with the velvet upper
robe, and answered sharply:

“Certainly it is I; but if you are really a nobleman, Sir Pyramus, take
care that I am not exposed by your fault to evil gossip, and can not
continue to hold my head erect as I now do.”

“Who will see us in this little dark street?” he asked in low,
persuasive tones. “May all the saints guard me from assailing the honour
of a modest maiden, fairest Barbara; yet, if you fear that I might
prevent your remaining in the future what the favour of the Most High
permits you to be, I shall rather accuse you of having inflicted upon me
what you fear may befall you; for, since the last dance, I am really no
longer myself, and can never become so until I have received from your
beautiful lips the modest consolation for which this poor, tortured,
loyal soul is yearning. May I not linger at your side long enough to ask
you one question, you severe yet ardently beloved maiden?”

“Certainly not,” replied Barbara with repellent harshness. “I never gave
you a right to speak to me of love; but, above all, I shall not seek the
sharer of a game of question and answer in the street.”

“Then name a place,” he whispered with passionate ardour, trying
meanwhile to clasp her hand, “where I may be permitted, in broad
sunlight and before the eyes of the whole world, to say to you what robs
me of rest by day and sleep by night. Drop the cruel harshness which
so strangely and painfully contradicts the language of your glances the
evening of the last dance. Your eyes have kindled these flames, and this
poor heart will consume in their glow if I am not suffered to confess
to you that I love you with more ardour than was ever bestowed on any
maiden. This place--I will admit that it is ill-chosen--but what other
was open to me? After all, here, too, a bit of the sky with its many
stars is looking down upon us. But, if you still unkindly refuse me,
or the dread of crossing the barrier of strict decorum forbids you to
listen to me here, you can mercifully name another spot. Allow me to go
to your father and beg him for the clear hand which, in a happier hour,
by not resisting the pressure of mine, awakened the fairest hopes in my
heart.”

“This is too much,” Barbara indignantly broke in. “Make way for me at
once, and, if you are well advised, you will spare yourself the visit to
my father; for, even if you were in earnest with your love and came as
an honest suitor to our modest house, it might easily happen that you
would descend the staircase, which is very steep and narrow, in as
sorrowful a mood as you climbed it secure of victory.”

Then Pyramus Kogel changed his tone, and said bitterly:

“So your victorious eyes were only carrying on an idle game with my
unsuspecting heart? You laugh! But I expected to find in my German
native land only girls whose chaste reserve and simple honesty could
be trusted. It would be a great sorrow if I should learn through you,
Jungfrau Barbara, that here, too, it would have been advisable to arm
myself against wanton deception. True, the French chansons you sing
sound unlike our sincere German songs. And then you, the fairest of the
fair, can choose at will among men; but the Emperor’s service carries me
from one country to another. I am only a poor nobleman--”

“I care not,” she interrupted him here with icy coldness; “you might be
just good enough for the daughter of another nobleman, who has little
more to call his own than you, Sir Knight, but nevertheless far too
little for me to grant you permission to load me with unjust reproaches.
Besides, you wholly lack the one advantage which the man to whom I am
willing to betroth myself must possess.”

“And what is that?” he asked eagerly.

“Neither gold nor lands, rank nor splendour,” she answered proudly, “but
changeless fidelity of the heart. Remember your fluttering from lovely
Elspet Zohrer to me, and from me to Elspet, Sir Pyramus, and ask
yourself what reason you would give me to expect the fulfilment of such
a demand. Your fine figure and gay manner please us girls very well at a
dance, but, though you should possess the wealth of the Fuggers and the
power of the Sultan, it would be useless trouble to seek my consent.
Stand out of my path at once! There come the Emperor’s body guards, and,
if you do not obey me, as surely as I hope for salvation I will call
them!”

The last words had escaped her lips in a raised voice, and vibrated
with such honest indignation that the recruiting officer yielded; but a
triumphant smile flitted over her beautiful face.

Had she known before how complete a victory he had already won over
pretty Elspet Zohrer, her most dangerous rival, this late errand would
have been unnecessary.

Yet she did not regret it; true, she cared no more for Pyramus Kogel
than for any one else--the certainty that he, too, had succumbed to
the spell of her beauty was associated with a feeling of pleasure whose
charm she knew and valued.




CHAPTER VII.

Every one in Ratisbon or at the court who spoke of Sir Wolf Hartschwert
called him an excellent fellow. In fact, he had so few defects and
faults that perhaps it might have been better for his advancement in
life and his estimation in the circle of society to which he belonged if
more of them had clung to him.

Hitherto the vice of avarice was the last with which he could have been
reproached. But, when his old friend filled his glass with wine, the
desire that the property left to him might prove larger than he had
expected overpowered every other feeling.

Formerly it had been welcome mainly as a testimonial of his old friend’s
affection. He did not need it for his own wants; his position at court
yielded him a far larger income than he required for the modest life to
which he was accustomed. For Barbara’s sake alone he eagerly hoped that
he had greatly underestimated his foster parents’ possessions.

Ought he to blame her because she desired to change the life of poverty
with her father for one which better harmonized with her worth and
tastes? He himself, who had lived years in a Roman palace, surrounded by
exquisite works of the gloriously developed Italian art, and then in
the one at Brussels, furnished with imperial splendour, did not feel
perfectly content in the more than simple room which Blomberg called his
“artist workshop.”

A few rude wooden chairs, a square table with clumsy feet, and an open
cupboard in which stood a few tin cups, were, the sole furniture of the
narrow, disproportionately long room, whose walls were washed with gray.
The ceiling, with its exposed beams, was blackened by the pine torches
which were often used for lights. Pieces of board were nailed over the
defective spots in the floor, and the lines where the walls met rarely
showed a right angle.

The window disappeared in the darkness. It was in the back of the niche
formed by the unusually thick walls. During the day its small, round
panes gave the old gentleman light while he guided his graving tool.
A wooden tripod supported the board on which his tools lay. The stool,
which usually stood on a wooden trestle opposite to it, now occupied a
place before the table bearing the flagon of wine, and was intended for
Barbara.

After the torches had ceased to burn, a single tallow candle in a
wrought-iron candlestick afforded the two men light, and threatened to
go out when, in the eagerness of their conversation, they forgot to use
the snuffers.

Neither curtain, carpet, nor noteworthy work of art pleased the eye in
this bare, strangely narrow room. The weapons and pieces of armour of
the aged champion of the faith, which hung high above the window, made
no pretension to beauty. Besides, the rays of the dim candle did not
extend to them any more than to the valueless pictures of saints and
virgins on the wall.

The door of Barbara’s little bow-window room stood open. Nothing but a
small oil lamp was burning there. But the articles it contained, though
dainty in themselves, were standing and lying about in such confusion
that it also presented an unpleasant aspect.

Yet Barbara’s beauty had shed such radiance upon this hideous
environment that the scene of her industry had seemed to Wolf like an
Eden.

Now he could scarcely understand this; but he found it so much the
easier to comprehend that these wretched surroundings no longer suited
such a pearl, and that it behooved him to procure it a worthier setting.

Still, it was by no means easy to ask the captain what he desired to
know, for during the young knight’s absence a great many important
things had happened which Blomberg was longing to tell.

He was in such haste to do this that he detained Wolf, who wanted to
speak to old Ursel before he began to drink the wine, by the statement
that she suffered from wakefulness, and he would disturb her just as she
was falling asleep.

The account of the property bequeathed to the young knight was only too
quickly completed, for, though the precentor’s will made his foster son
the sole heir, the legacy consisted only of the house, some portable
property, and scarcely more than a thousand florins.

Yet perhaps something else was coming to Wolf; early yesterday Dr.
Hiltner, the syndic of the city, had asked his place of residence, and
added that he had some news for him which promised good fortune.

After these communications Blomberg hoped to be able to mention the
important events which had occurred in Ratisbon during his young
friend’s absence; but Wolf desired with such eager curiosity to hear the
syndic’s news first that it vexed the captain, and he angrily told him
that he would bite off his tongue before he would even say “How are
you?” to that man, and to play eavesdropper to any one was not at all in
his line.

Here his companion interrupted with the query, What had caused the
learned scholar, whom every one, as well as the precentor, had highly
esteemed, to forfeit his friend’s good opinion?

Blomberg had waited for such a question.

He had been like a loaded culverin, and Wolf had now touched the burning
match to the powder. To understand why he, Blomberg, who wished only
the best fortune to every good Christian, would fain have this thorough
scoundrel suffer all the torments of hell, the young knight must first
learn what had happened in Ratisbon since the last Reichstag.

Until then the good city had resisted the accursed new religious
doctrines which had gained a victory in Nuremberg and the other cities
of the empire.

Here also, as Wolf himself had probably experienced, there had been
no lack of inclination toward the Lutheran doctrine. It was certainly
natural, since it suited the stomach better to fill itself, even during
Lent, than to renounce meat; since there were shameless priests who
would rather embrace a woman than to remain unmarried; since the Church
property bestowed by pious souls was a welcome morsel to princes and
to cities, and, finally, because licentiousness was more relished
than wholesome discipline. The wicked desires inspired by all the evil
spirits and their tool, the Antichrist Luther, had gained the upper hand
here also, and Dr. Hiltner, above all others, had prepared the way for
them in Ratisbon. Even at the last Reichstag his Majesty the Emperor had
earnestly, but with almost too much gracious forbearance, endeavoured
to effect a union between the contending parties, but directly after
his departure from the city rebellion raised its head with boundless
insolence. The very next year the Council formally introduced the evil
which they called ecclesiastical reformation. The blinded people flocked
to the new parish church to attend the first service, which they called
“Protestant.” Then the mischief hastened forward with gigantic strides.

“Last year,” cried the old gentleman, hoarse with indignation, striking
the table with his clenched fist as if he were in camp, “I saw them with
my own eyes throw down and drag away, I know not where, the pillar with
the beautiful image of Mary, the masterpiece of Erhard Heydenreich,
the architect of the cathedral, which stood in front of the new parish
church. Songs had been composed in her honour, and she was dear and
precious to you from early childhood, as well as to every native of
Ratisbon; the precentor--God rest his soul!--read to me from your letter
from Rome what exquisite works of art you saw there every day, but that
you still remembered with pleasure the beautiful Virgin at home.

“But what do these impious wretches care about beautiful and sacred
things? The temple desecrators removed and destroyed one venerable,
holy image after another. True, they did not venture into the cathedral,
probably from fear of his Majesty the Emperor, and whoever had
undertaken to lay hands upon the altar painting and the Madonna in our
chapel would have paid for it--I am not boasting--with his life. Though
‘the beautiful Mary,’ in her superabundant mercy, quietly endured the
affront offered, our Lord himself punished it, for he inspired the
illustrious Duke of Bavaria to issue an edict which forbids his subjects
to trade with Ratisbon. Whoever even enters the city must pay a heavy
fine. This set many people thinking. Ursel will tell you what sinful
prices we have paid since for butter and meat. Even the innocent are
obliged to buckle their belts tighter. Those who wished to escape
fasting are now compelled by poverty to practise abstinence. It is said
the Roman King Ferdinand is urging the revocation of the order. If I
were in his place, I would advise making it more stringent till the
rebels sweat blood and crept to the cross.”

Then Blomberg bewailed the untimely leniency of the Emperor, for there
was not even any rumour of a serious assault upon the Turks. And yet,
if only he, Blomberg, was commissioned to raise an army of the cross,
Christianity would soon have rest from its mortal foe! But if it
should come to fighting--no matter whether against the infidels or the
heretics--in spite of Wawerl and his lame leg, he would take the field
again. No death could be more glorious than in battle against the
destroyer of souls. The scoundrels were flourishing like tares among the
wheat. At the last Reichstag the Electors of Brandenburg and Saxony,
as well as the Landgrave Philip of Hesse, brought their own preachers,
whose sermons turned many heads, even the pastor of St. Emmeran’s,
Zollern, who was a child of Ratisbon. At Staufferhof Baron von Stauff,
formerly a man worthy of all honour, had opened his chapel of St. Ann to
all the citizens to permit them to participate in the Lutheran idolatry.
Two Protestant ministers, one of whom, Dr. Forster, Luther himself had
brought to Ratisbon, were liberally paid by the Council. Whether Wolf
believed it or not, Father Hamberger, whom he surely remembered as Prior
of the Minorites, and who at that time enjoyed universal esteem, had
taken a wife, and the rest of the monks had followed the iniquitous
example. Many other priests had married if it suited them, and, instead
of the cowl, wore secular garments. The instruction given in the school
of poets was perfectly abominable, as he heard from Councillor Steuerer,
who was faithful to the Catholic Church, and strove to induce the Duke
of Bavaria to adopt still sterner measures against all this disorder.

Very recently men hitherto blameless, like Andreas Weinzierl and Georg
Seidl, had sent their eighteen-year-old sons to the University
of Wittenberg, where the Lutheran heresies were flourishing most
luxuriantly.

But the worst of all was that even faithful sons and daughters of Holy
Church could not keep themselves wholly untouched by such mischief.
Among these, alas! were he and his Wawerl, for he had been obliged to
allow the girl to join the choristers who sang in the Convivium Musicum,
which the Council had established in the summer three years before. Two
councillors were assigned to each Convivium, and thus these arrangements
were in Protestant hands.

“Of course,” he added dejectedly, “I wished to forbid her taking part in
them, but, though with me it is usually bend or break, what can a man
do when a woman is pestering him day and night, sometimes begging with
tears, sometimes with caresses?

“Besides, many a good Catholic entreated me to give up my opposition.
They, do not grudge the girl her progress, and how much she already owes
to the music teacher who now directs the Collegium Musicuin! Singing is
everything to her, and what else can I give the poor child? At any
rate, the Netherlander whom the Council brought here three years ago--so
connoisseurs say--scarcely has his equal anywhere in knowledge and
ability. The man came to me and frankly said that he needed the girl’s
voice for the Convivium, and, if I refused to let Wawerl take part, he
would stop teaching her. As he is a just man of quiet temperament and
advanced in years.”

“Where is he from, and what is his name?” Wolf eagerly interrupted.

“Damian Feys,” replied the captain, “and he is a native of Ghent in the
Netherlands. Although he is in the pay of the city, he has remained--he
told me so himself--a good Catholic. There was nothing to be feared for
the child on the score of religion. The anxieties which are troubling me
on her account come from another source.”

Then, with a mischievous mirthfulness usually foreign to his nature,
Wolf raised his goblet, exclaiming:

“Cast them upon me, Father Blomberg! I will gladly help you bear them as
your loyal son-in-law.”

“So that’s the way of it,” was the captain’s answer, his honest eyes
betraying more surprise than pleasure.

Yet he pledged Wolf, and, touching his glass to his, said:

“I’ve often thought that this might happen if you should see how she has
grown up. If she consents, nothing could please me better; but how
many lovers she has already encouraged, and then, before matters became
serious, dismissed! I have experienced it. If you succeed in putting an
end to such trifling, may this hour be blessed! But do you know the huge
maggots she keeps under her golden hair?”

“Both large and small ones,” cried Wolf, with glowing cheeks. “Truthful
as she is, she did not conceal from the playmate of her youth a single
impulse of her ambitious soul.”

“And did she give you hope?” asked the captain, thrusting his head
eagerly forward.

“Yes,” replied the youth firmly; but he quickly corrected himself,
and, in a less confident tone, added, “That is, if I could offer her a
care-free life.”

“There it is,” sighed the old man. “She knows what she wants, and holds
firmly to it. You are the son of a knight, and on account of the music
which you can pursue together--With her everything is possible and
little is impossible. In any case, you will have no easy life with her,
and, ere you order the wedding ring----” Here he suddenly stopped, for
a bird-song, high, clear, and yet as insinuatingly sweet as though,
on this evening in late April, the merriest and most skilful feathered
songsters which had recently found their way home to the fresh green
leafage on the shore of the Danube had made an appointment on the steps
of the gloomy house in Red Cock Street, rose nearer and nearer to the
two men who were sitting over their wine.

It was difficult to believe that this whistling and chirping, trilling
and cuckoo calling, came from the same throat; but when the bird notes
ceased just outside the door, and Barbara, with bright mirthfulness and
the airiest grace, sang the refrain of the Chant des Oiseaux, ‘Car la
saison est bonne’, bowing gracefully meanwhile, the old enemy of the
Turks fairly beamed with delight.

His eyes, wet with tears of grateful joy, sought the young man’s,
and, though he had just warned him plainly enough against courting
his daughter, his sparkling gaze now asked whether he had ever met an
equally bewitching marvel.

“The deuce!” he cried out to his daughter when she at last paused and
extended her hand to him. He leaned comfortably farther back in his
arm-chair as he spoke, but she kissed him lightly on the forehead, while
her large blue eyes shone with cheerful content.

She had gained her object.

When she sang this song she was safe from any troublesome questions.
Besides, Gombert, of Bruges, the director of the imperial orchestra, who
had arrived in Ratisbon that very day, was the composer of the charming
bird-song, and she knew from her singing master that, though her voice
was best adapted to solemn hymns, nothing in the whole range of secular
music suited it better than this “Car la saison est bonne.” She longed
for the praise of such a musician, and Wolf must accompany her to him.

The young knight had not only been joyfully surprised, but most deeply
delighted by the bewitching execution of this most charmingly arranged
refrain.

Maestro Gombert and his colleague Appenzelder, the conductor of the boy
choir, must hear it on the morrow. And how gladly Barbara consented to
fulfil this wish!

She had received the greatest praise, she said, in the motet of the
Blessed Virgin, by Josquin de Pres, in the noble song ‘Ecce tu pulchra
es’. Her teacher specially valued this master and his countryman
Gombert, and his exquisite compositions were frequently and gladly sung
at the Convivium.

This pleased Wolf, for he had a right to call himself, not only the
pupil, but the friend of the director of the orchestra. As, seizing the
lute, he began Gombert’s Shepherd and Shepherdess, Barbara, unasked,
commenced the song.

When, after Barbara’s bell-like, well-trained voice had sung many other
melodies, the young knight at last took leave of his old friends, he
whispered that he had not expected to find home so delightful.

She, too, went to rest in a joyous, happy mood, and, as she lay in her
narrow bed, asked herself whether she could not renounce her ardent
longing for wealth and splendour and be content with a modest life at
Wolf’s side.

She liked him, he would cherish her, and lovingly devote the great
skill which he had gained in Italy and the Netherlands to the final
cultivation of her voice. Her house would become a home of art, her life
would be pervaded and ennobled by song and music. What grander existence
could earth offer?

Before she found an answer to this question, sleep closed her weary
eyes. But when, the next morning, the cobbler’s one-eyed daughter, who,
since old Ursel’s illness, had done the rough work in the chambers and
kitchen, waked her, she speedily changed her mind. It was hard to
rise early after the day’s ironing and the late hour at which she
had retired, and, besides, when Barbara returned from mass, the maid
reported that Frau Lerch had been there and left the message that Fran
Itzenweck wanted the laces which had been promised to her early that
day.

So Barbara was obliged to go to work again immediately after the early
breakfast. But, while she was loosening the laces from the pins and
stirring her slender white fingers busily for the wretched pittance, her
soul was overflowing with thoughts of the most sublime works of music,
and the desire for success, homage, and a future filled with happiness
and splendour.

Vehement repugnance to the humble labour to which necessity forced her
was like a bitter taste in her mouth, and, ere she had folded the last
strips of lace, she turned her back to the work-table and pressed both
hands upon her bosom, while from the inmost depths of her tortured soul
came the cry: “I will never bear it! In one way or another I will put an
end to this life of beggary.”

Thanks to old Ursel’s care, Wolf had found his bed made and everything
he needed at hand in his foster parents’ deserted lodging. To avoid
disturbing the sick woman, he removed his shoes in the entry, and then
glided into his former little room. Weariness had soon closed his eyes
also, but only for a few hours. His fevered blood, fear, and hope drove
him from his couch at the first dawn of morning.

Ere returning to the two men the evening before, Barbara had hastily
spoken to Ursula, and brought her whatever she preferred to receive from
her hands rather than those of the one-eyed maid who spent the night
with her--her Sunday cap and a little sealed package which she kept in
her chest. When Wolf tapped at her door early the next morning, she was
already up, and had had her cap put on. This was intended to give her
a holiday appearance, but the expression of her faithful eyes and the
smile upon her sunken mouth showed her darling that his return was a
festival to her.

The stroke of apoplexy which had attacked the woman of seventy had been
slight, and merely affected her speech a little. But she found plenty of
words to show Wolf how happy it made her to see him again, and to tell
him about his foster parents’ last illness and death.

The precentor and organist, aided by Bishop Pangraz Sinzenhofer and
Blasius, the captain of the city guard, had endeavoured to collect the
papers which proved Wolf’s noble birth. The package that Barbara
handed to her the evening before contained the patent of nobility newly
authorized by King Frederick at Vienna and the certificate of baptism
which proved him to be the only son of the Frank Knight Ullmann
Hartschwert and the Baroness Wendula Sandhof.

His mother’s family died with her; on his father’s side, as the
precentor had learned, he still had an uncle, his father’s older
brother, but his castle had been destroyed during the Peasant War. He
himself had commanded for several years a large troop of mercenaries in
the service of the Queen of England, and his three children, a son and
two daughters, had entered monastic and conventual life.

The contents of the package confirmed all these statements. Moreover,
the very Dr. Hiltner, of whom Barbara’s father had spoken so
disagreeably, had paid a visit the day before to Ursel, who had won the
esteem of the preceptor’s old friend, and told her that he wished to
talk with Wolf about an important matter.

It afforded the young man genuine pleasure to wait upon the faithful old
woman and give her her medicine and barley-gruel. His mother had brought
him to Ratisbon when he was a little boy four years old, and Ursel at
that time had been his nurse. She had clung more closely to him than the
woman to whom he owed his life, for his mother had deserted him to
take the veil in the convent of the Sisters of St. Clare, but her
maid-servant Ursel would not part from him. So she was received by his
foster parents when they adopted him, and had served them faithfully
until their deaths.

The wrinkled countenance of the old woman, who, even on her sick-bed,
retained her neat appearance, expressed shrewdness and energy.

Wolf’s services were a pleasure and an honour. A grateful, affectionate
glance acknowledged each, and meanwhile he became clearly aware of the
treasure which he, the orphaned youth, possessed in this faithful old
friend.

If he saw aright, she might yet live a long time, and this gave him
heartfelt joy. With her he would lose the last witness of his childhood,
the chronicle, as it were, of his earliest youth. He could not
understand why he had never before induced her to tell him her
recollections.

During his boyhood, which was crowded with work, he had been content
when she told him in general outlines that, during the Peasant War,
fierce bands had attacked his father’s castle, that one of his own
bondmen had slain him with an axe, and that his mother had fled with
Wolf to Ratisbon, where her brother lived as provost of the cathedral.
He had invited her, at the outbreak of the peasant insurrection, to
place herself under his protection.

The old woman had also described to him how, amid great hardships, they
had reached the city in midwinter, and finally that his mother found
Baron Sandhof, her brother, at the point of death, and, after her hope
of having a home with the provost of the cathedral was baffled, she had
taken the veil in the convent of the Dominicans, called here the Black
Penitents. Wolf’s foster father, the organist Stenzel, who was closely
connected with his uncle, had rendered this step easier for the deserted
widow by receiving the little boy in his childless home.

Ursel must give him more minute particulars concerning all these things.

His mother, who knew that he was well cared for, had troubled herself
very little about him, and devoted her life to the care of her own
salvation and that of her murdered husband, who had died without the
benefit of the holy sacrament.

When he was fifteen, she closed her eyes on the world, and the hour
when, on her death bed, she had asked of him a vow to be faithful to the
Catholic Church and shut his heart against heresy, was as vividly before
his memory as if she had just passed away.

He did not allude to these things now, for his heart urged him to
confide to the faithful old woman what he thought of Barbara, and the
beautiful hopes with which he had left her.

Ursel closed her eyes for a while and twirled the thumb of the hand she
could use around the other for some time; but at last she gently nodded
the little head framed in her big cap, and said carelessly:

“So you would like to seek a wife, child? Well, well! It comes once
to every one. And you are thinking of Wawerl? It would certainly be
fortunate for the girl. Marriages are made in heaven, and God’s mills
grind slowly. If the result is not what you expect, you must not murmur,
and, above all things, don’t act rashly. But now I can use my heavy
tongue no longer. Remember Dr. Hiltner. When duty will permit, you’ll
find time for another little chat with old Ursel.”

Casting a loving farewell glance at Wolf as she spoke, she turned over
on the other side.

As his footsteps receded from her bedside, she pressed her lips more
firmly together, thinking: “Why should I spoil his beautiful dream of
happiness? What Wawerl offers to the eyes and ears of men is certainly
most beautiful. But her heart! It is lacking! Unselfish love would be
precisely what the early orphaned youth needs, and that Wawerl will
never give him. Yet I wish no heavier anxieties oppressed me! One thing
is certain--the husband of the girl upstairs must wear a different look
from my darling, with his modest worth. The Danube will flow uphill
before she goes to the altar with him! So, thank Heaven, I can console
myself with that!”

But, soon after, she remembered many things which she had formerly
believed impossible, yet which, through unexpected influence, had
happened.

Then torturing uneasiness seized her. She anxiously clasped her
emaciated hands, and from her troubled bosom rose the prayer that the
Lord would preserve her darling from the fulfilment of the most ardent
desire of his heart.




CHAPTER VIII.

Wolf’s first walk took him to the Golden Cross, the lodgings of the
Emperor Charles and his court. The sky had clouded again, and a keen
northwest wind was blowing across the Haidplatz and waving the banner
on the lofty square battlemented tower at the right of the stately old
edifice.

It had originally belonged to the Weltenburg family as a strong
offensive and defensive building, then frequently changed hands.

The double escutcheon on the bow-window was that of the Thun and Fugger
von Reh families, who had owned it in Wolf’s childhood.

Now he glanced up to see whether young Herr Crafft, to whom the building
now belonged, had not also added an ornament to it. But when Wolf’s
gaze wandered so intently from the tower to the bow-window, and from the
bow-window to the great entrance door, it was by no means from pleasure
or interest in the exterior of the Golden Cross, but because Barbara had
confessed that the nineteen-year-old owner of the edifice, who was still
a minor, was also wooing her.

What was the probable value of this stately structure, this aristocratic
imperial abode? How rich its owner was! yet she, the brilliant young
beauty who had grown up in poverty, disdained young Crafft because her
heart did not attract her to him.

So, in this case, faithful Ursel must deceive herself and misjudge the
girl, for the old woman’s strangely evasive words had revealed plainly
enough that she did not consider Barbara the right wife for him.

The good people of Ratisbon could not understand this rare creature! Her
artist nature gave her peculiar, unusual traits of character, which were
distasteful to the ways of German burghers. Whatever did not fit the
usual forms, whatever surpassed ordinary models, was regarded with
distrust. He himself had scarcely been able to understand how a girl so
free and independent in her feelings, and probably also in her actions,
such a mistress of the art of singing, whose performances fulfilled the
highest demands, could have bloomed and matured in this environment.

Old Ursel’s evasion had wounded and troubled him; the thoughts
associated with the double escutcheon on the bow-window, however,
revived the clouded feeling of happiness, and, with head erect, he
passed the guards at the entrance and went into the corridor, which was
again crowded with lords and ladies of the court, priests of all ranks,
knights, pages, and servants.

His position gave him access to the Queen of Hungary’s apartments
without delay--nay, he might hope to be received by her Majesty sooner
than many of the knights, lords and ladies, ecclesiastical and secular
dignitaries who were waiting there; the stewards, chamberlains and
heralds, the ladies of the court, pages, and lackeys knew that the royal
lady not only summoned Sir Wolf Hartschwert frequently, but welcomed his
presence.

Nearly all were Spaniards or natives of the Netherlands, and it was
fortunate for Wolf, on the one hand, that he had learned their language
quickly and well in Italy and Brussels, and, on the other, that his
birth entitled him to a place with nobles who had the rank of knights.

How formal and stiffly precise everything was here! How many backs bowed
low, how softly bombastic, high-sounding words were murmured! It seemed
as if every free, warm impulse would lapse into stiffness and coldness;
moreover, those assembled here were not the poor petitioners of other
antechambers, but lords and ladies who belonged to the most illustrious
and aristocratic families, while among the waiting ecclesiastics there
was many a prelate with the dignified bearing of a bishop.

Some of the Netherlanders alone frequently threw off the constraint
which fettered all, and one even turned with the gayest ease from one
person to another. This was Baron Malfalconnet, one of the Emperor’s
major-domos. He was permitted to do what no one else ventured, for his
cheerfulness and wit, his gift of story-telling, and sharp tongue often
succeeded in dispelling the clouds of melancholy from the brow of his
imperial master.

At Wolf’s entrance the baron greeted him with merry banter, and then
whispered to him that the regent was expecting him in her private room,
where the leaders of the newly arrived musicians had already gone. As
Wolf belonged to the “elect,” he would conduct him to her Majesty before
“the called” who were here in the waiting room.

As he spoke he delivered him to the Emperor’s confidential secretary,
Gastelu, whom Wolf had often aided in the translation of German letters,
and the latter ushered him into the Queen’s reception room.

It was the royal lady’s sleeping apartment, a moderately wide, unusually
deep chamber, looking out upon the Haidplatz. The walls were hung with
Flanders Gobelin tapestry, whose coloured pictures represented woodland
landscapes and hunters. The Queen’s bed stood halfway down the long wall
at the right.

Little could be seen of her person, for heavy gold-embroidered damask
curtains hung around the wide, lofty bedstead, falling from the canopy
projecting, rootlike, above the top, where gilded child genii bore a
royal crown. On the side toward the room the curtains were drawn back
far enough to allow those who were permitted to approach the regent to
see her head and the upper portion of her body, which was wrapped in an
ermine cape.

She leaned in a sitting posture against a pile of white satin pillows,
and her thick locks, interwoven with strings of pearls, bore witness to
the skill of the maid who had combed and curled them so artistically and
adorned them with a heron’s plume. Two beautiful English pointers and
a slender hound were moving about and sometimes disturbed the repose of
the two Wachtersbach badger dogs, who were trained to keep side by side
everywhere--in the room as well as in hunting. When the door opened they
only raised their sagacious little heads with a low growl.

The other living beings who had obtained admittance to the Queen’s
chamber at so early an hour were constrained by etiquette to formal,
silent quiescence. Only the ladies in waiting and the chamberlains moved
to and fro unasked, but they also stepped lightly and graduated the
depth of the bow with which they greeted each individual to suit his
or her rank, while the pages used their nimble feet, whose tread silken
shoes rendered noiseless, lightly and carelessly.

The features of most of the persons present expressed reverence and
expectation. But although, on account of the clouded sky and the small
window panes, the rear of the deep apartment especially was only dimly
lighted, the impression produced was neither gloomy nor depressing. This
was prevented by the swift movements of the pages, the shrill screams
of the gay parrots at the window, the paraphernalia of the chase hung on
the wall, and especially by the regent herself, whose clear voice broke
the silence with gay unconcern, and exerted a redeeming influence upon
the constraint of the listeners.

She had just received the Bishop of Hildesheim, the Prince of Savoy,
and the Countess Tassis, but gave each only a brief audience, for
the entrance of the conductor of the orchestra had not escaped her
attention.

Several other personages of the highest rank were still among the
waiting group, and her chamberlain, Count Hochstraaten, asked in a low
tone whether she would deign to receive the Count Palatine von Simmern;
but she was determined to close the audience, for Wolf Hartschwert had
entered the room, and the subjects which she desired to discuss with him
and the musicians would permit no witnesses.

So, without answering Hochstraaten’s question, she turned her face
toward the chamber, and said, loudly enough to be heard by all present:

“This reception must suffice for to-day! Whoever does not know that I
used last night in his Majesty’s service for a better purpose than sleep
will deem me a lazy sluggard. Would to Heaven I had no worse fault! The
rising sun sees me more frequently at my station in the hunting grounds
than it does many of you, my honoured friends, at the breakfast table.
So, Hochstraaten, be kind enough to tell the ladies and gentlemen who
have given me the pleasure of their visits, that their patience shall be
less severely tried this evening before vespers.”

While speaking, she beckoned to the Marquise de Leria, her oldest lady
in waiting, and, as the latter bent her aged back to adjust the pillows,
the Queen whispered to her to detain the conductor of the orchestra and
Sir Wolf Hartschwert.

The order was instantly obeyed, but some time elapsed ere the last of
those who had sought an audience left the room, for, although the regent
vouchsafed no one a glance, but turned the pages of a note-book which
had been lying on the little table at the head of her bed, each person,
before crossing the threshold, bowed toward the couch in the slow,
formal manner which etiquette dictated.

As soon as Queen Mary found herself alone with the musicians and the
marquise, she beckoned graciously to the former, but with familiar
kindness to Wolf, and asked for a brief account of his journey. Then she
confessed that the Emperor’s sufferings and melancholy mood had induced
her to subject them to the discomforts of the trip to Ratisbon. His
Majesty was ignorant of their presence, but she anticipated the most
favourable result upon her royal brother, who so warmly loved and keenly
appreciated music, if he could hear unexpectedly the finest melodies,
sometimes inspiring, sometimes cheering in tone.

Her inquiry whether his Majesty’s orchestra and her own boys would be
able to give a performance that evening was eagerly answered in the
affirmative by Maestro Gombert, the conductor of the orchestra, and
Benedictus Appenzelder, conductor of the boy choir, who was in her
personal service. She expressed her pleasure in the knowledge, and then
proposed to surprise the Emperor at the principal meal, about midnight,
with Jacob Hobrecht’s Missa Graecorum, whose magnificent profundity his
Majesty especially admired.

Gombert forced himself to keep silence, but the significant smile on his
delicate, beardless lips betrayed what he thought of this selection. The
conductor of the boy choir was franker. He slightly shook his ponderous
head, whose long, gray hair was parted in the middle, and then honestly
admitted, in his deep tones, that the Missa Graecorum seemed to him
too majestic and gloomy for this purpose. Wolf, too, disapproved of the
Queen’s suggestion for the same reason, and, though she pointed out
that she had chosen this composition precisely on account of its deep
religious earnestness, the former persisted in his opposition, and
modestly mentioned the melody which would probably be best suited for a
surprise at his imperial Majesty’s repast.

Maestro Gombert had recently composed a Benedictio Mensae for four
voices, and, as it was one of his most effective creations, had never
been executed, and therefore would be entirely new to the Emperor, it
was specially adapted to introduce the concert with which the monarch
was to be surprised at table.

The Queen would have preferred that a religious piece should commence
the musical performance, but assented to Wolf’s proposal. Gombert
himself dispelled her fear that his composition would be purely secular
in character, and Wolf upheld him by singing to the musical princess,
to the accompaniment of the lute, snatches of the principal theme of the
Benedictio, which had impressed itself upon his faithful memory.

Gombert assisted him, but Appenzelder stroked his long beard, signifying
his approval by nods and brief exclamations of satisfaction. The Queen
was now sincerely glad that this piece of music had been brought to her
notice; certainly nothing more suitable for the purpose could have been
found. Besides, her kindly nature and feminine tact made her grateful to
Wolf for his hint of distinguishing, by the first performance of one
of his works, the able conductor and fine composer upon whom she had
imposed so fatiguing a journey.

She would gladly have given Appenzelder also some token of her favour,
but she could not have used any of his compositions--the most famous of
which was a dirge--upon this occasion, and the blunt long-beard frankly
admitted this, and declared unasked that he desired nothing better
than to offer his Majesty, with the Benedictio, the first greeting of
Netherland music.

Gombert’s bearing was that of an aristocrat, his lofty brow that of a
thinker, and his mobile mouth rendered it easy to perceive what a wealth
of joyous mirth dwelt within the soul of this artist, who was equally
distinguished in grave and gay moods.

Queen Mary was by no means blind to these merits, and lamented the
impossibility of being on more familiar terms of intercourse with him
and his colleague of the boy choir. But both were of humble birth, and
from childhood custom had prohibited her, as well as the other female
members of her family, from associating with persons who did not belong
to the nobility. So there was no place for either in her household.

Rough Appenzelder regarded this as fortunate; Gombert thought it a
matter of course because custom so ordained.

The stimulus which the Queen could expect from Wolf Hartschwert was
certainly far less deep and varied; yet to him who, as a knight,
belonged to her train, she granted many favours which she denied the
famous Gombert. Besides, Wolf’s musical knowledge was as remarkable
as his usefulness as a secretary. Lastly, his equable disposition, his
unerring sense of propriety, and his well-proved fidelity had gained the
full confidence of the royal lady.

By the side of the two composers and leaders of the musicians he looked
almost boyish, yet, as the regent was overburdened with affairs of
state, she confided to him alone the care of the further success of the
surprise.

He was familiar with the rooms of the Golden Cross, and before midnight
would have posted the singers and musicians so that his Majesty would
first learn through his ears the pleasure which they intended to bestow
upon him.




CHAPTER IX.

The Queen’s commission imposed upon Wolf a long series of inspections,
inquiries, orders, and preparations, the most important of which
detained him a long time at the Golden Cross.

After he had done what was necessary there, he hastily took a lunch, and
then went to the house of the Golden Stag. The steward of the Schiltl
family, to whom the house belonged, but who were now in the country, had
given the boy choir shelter there, and Wolf was obliged to inform
the leader of his arrangements. Appenzelder had intended to practise
exercises with his young pupils in the chapel belonging to this old
house, familiar to all the inhabitants of Ratisbon, but Wolf found it
empty. On the other hand, young, clear voices echoed from a room in the
lower story.

The door stood half open, and, before he crossed the threshold, he had
heard with surprise the members of the boy choir, lads ranging from
twelve to fifteen, discussing how they should spend the leisure time
awaiting them.

The ringleader, Giacomo Bianchi, from Bologna, was asserting that “the
old bear”--he meant Appenzelder--“would never permit the incomplete
choir to sing before the Emperor and his royal sister.”

“So we shall have the afternoon,” he exclaimed. “The grooms will give me
a horse, and after dinner I, and whoever cares to go with me, will ride
back to the village where we last stopped. What do I want there? I’ll
get the kiss which the tavernkeeper’s charming little daughter owes
me. Her sweet mouth and fair braids with the bows of blue ribbon--I saw
nothing prettier anywhere!”

“Yes, these blondes!” cried Angelo Negri, a Neapolitan boy of thirteen,
rolling his black eyes upward enthusiastically, and kissing, for lack of
warm lips, the empty air.

“Sweet, sweet, sweet,” sighed Giacoma Bianchi.

“Sweet enough,” remarked little thick-set Cornelius Groen from Breda,
in broken Italian. “Yet you surely are not thinking of that silly girl,
with her flaxen braids, but of the nice honey and the light white pastry
she brought us. If we can get that again, I’ll ride there with you.”

“I won’t,” protested Wilhelm Haldema, from Leuwarden in Friesland. “I
shall go down to the river with my pole. It’s swarming with fish.”

Wolf had remained concealed until this moment. Now he entered the huge
apartment.

The boys rushed toward him with joyous ease, and, as they crowded around
him, asking all sorts of questions, it was evident that he possessed
their affection and confidence.

He kindly motioned to them to keep silence, and asked what induced them
to expect leisure time on that day, when, by the exertion of all their
powers, they were to display their skill in the presence of their
mistress and the Emperor.

The answer was not delayed--nay, it sprang from many young lips at the
same time. Unfortunately, its character was such that Wolf scarcely
ventured to hope for the full success of the surprise.

Johann of Cologne and Benevenuto Bosco of Catania, in Sicily, the two
leaders and ornaments of the choir, were so very ill that their recovery
could scarcely be expected even within the next few days. The native
of Cologne had been attacked on the way by a hoarseness which made the
fifteenyear-old lad uneasy, because signs of the approaching change of
voice had already appeared.

The break meant to the extremely musical youth, who had been
distinguished by the bell-like purity of his tones, the loss of his
well-paid position in the boy choir, which, for his poor mother’s sake,
he must retain as long as possible. So, with mingled grief and hope,
he dipped deeply into his slender purse when, at Neumarkt, where the
travelling musicians spent the night just at the time the annual fair
was held, he met a quack who promised to help him.

This extremely talkative old man, who styled himself “Body physician to
many distinguished princes and courts,” boasted of possessing a secret
remedy of the famous Bartliolomaus Anglicus, which, besides other
merits, also had the power of bestowing upon a harsh voice the melody of
David’s harp.

Still, the young native of Cologne delayed some time before using the
nostrum. Not until the hoarseness increased alarmingly did he in his
need take the leech’s prescription, and Benevenuto Bosco, whom he had
admitted to his confidence, and who also felt a certain rawness in his
throat, since beyond Nuremberg one shower of rain after another had
drenched the travellers, asked him to let him use the medicine also.

At first both thought that they felt a beneficial result; but soon their
condition changed for the worse, and their illness constantly increased.

On reaching Ratisbon they were obliged to go to bed, and a terrible
night was followed by an equally bad morning.

When Appenzelder returned from the audience at the Golden Cross, he
found his two best singers in so pitiable a condition that he was
obliged to summon the Emperor’s leech, Dr. Mathys, to the sufferers.

The famous physician was really under obligations to remain near the
sovereign at this time of day. Yet he had gone at once to the Stag, and
pronounced the patients there to be the victims of severe poisoning.

A Ratisbon colleague, whom he found with the sufferers, was to
superintend the treatment which he prescribed.

He had left the house a short time before. Master Appenzelder, Wolf
heard from the choir boys, was now with the invalids, and the knight set
off to inquire about them at once.

He had forbidden the idle young singers who wanted to go with him to
follow, but one had secretly slipped after, and, in one of the dark
corridors of the big house, full of nooks and corners, he suddenly heard
a voice call his name. Ere he was aware of it, little Hannibal Melas,
a young Maltese in the boy choir, whose silent, reserved nature had
obtained for him from the others the nickname Tartaruga, the tortoise,
seized his right hand in both his own.

It was done with evident excitement, and his voice sounded eagerly
urgent as he exclaimed:

“I fix my last hope on you, Sir Knight, for you see there is scarcely
one of the others who would not have an intercessor. But I! Who would
trouble himself about me? Yet, if you would only put in a good word, my
time would surely come now.”

“Your time?” asked Wolf in astonishment; but the little fellow eagerly
continued:

“Yes, indeed! What Johann of Cologne or at least what Benevenuto can do,
I can trust myself to do too. The master need only try it with me, and,
now that both are ill, put me in place of one or the other.”

Wolf, who knew what each individual chorister could do, shook his head,
and began to tell the boy from Malta for what good reason the master
preferred the two sick youths; but little Hannibal interrupted by
exclaiming, in tones of passionate lamentation:

“So you are the same? The master having begun it, all misjudge and crush
me! Instead of giving me an opportunity to show what I can do in a solo
part, I am forced back into the crowd. My best work disappears in the
chorus. And yet, Sir Wolf, in spite of all, I heard the master’s own
lips say in Brussels--I wasn’t listening--that he had never heard what
lends a woman’s voice its greatest charm come so softly and tenderly
from the throat of a boy. Those are his own words. He will not deny
them, for at least he is honest. What is to become of the singing
without Johann and Benevenuto? But if they would try me, and at least
trust a part of Bosco’s music to me--”

Here he stopped, for Master Appenzelder was just coming from the door
of the sick-room into the corridor; but Wolf, with a playful gesture,
thrust his fingers through the lad’s bushy coal-black hair, turned him
in the direction from which he came, and called after him, “Your cause
is in good hands, you little fellow with the big name.”

Then, laying his hand on the arm of the deeply troubled musician, and
pointing to the boy who was trotting, full of hope, down the corridor,
he said: “‘Hannibal ante portas!’ A cry of distress that is full of
terror; but the Maltese Hannibal who is vanishing yonder gave me an idea
which will put an end to your trouble, my dear Maestro. The sooner the
two poisoned lads recover the better, of course; yet the Benedictio
Mensae need not remain unsung on account of their heedlessness, for
little Hannibal showed me the best substitute.”

This promise flowed from Wolf’s lips with such joyous confidence that
the grave musician’s sombre face brightened; but it swiftly darkened
again, and he exclaimed, “We don’t give such hasty work!” When the
knight tried to tell him what he had in mind, the other brusquely
interrupted with the request that he would first aid him in a more
important matter. Wolf was acquainted with the city, and perhaps would
spare him a walk by informing him where the sick lads would find the
best shelter. The Stag was overcrowded, and he was reluctant to leave
the poor fellows in the little sleeping room which they shared with
their companions. The Ratisbon physician had ordered them to be sent to
the hospital; but the boy from Cologne opposed it so impetuously that
he, Appenzelder, thought it his duty to seek another shelter for the
sufferers.

When Wolf with the older man entered the low, close chamber, he found
the lad, a handsome, vigorous boy, with his fair, curling hair tossed in
disorder around his fevered face, standing erect in his bed. While the
doctor was trying to compel him to obey and enter the litter which stood
waiting for him, he beat him back with his strong young fists. He would
rather jump into the open grave or into the rushing river, he shrieked
to the corpulent leech, than be dragged into the hospital, which was the
plague, death, hell.

He emphasized his resistance with heavy blows, while his Italian
companion in suffering, livid, ashen-gray, with bowed head and closed
lids, permitted himself to be placed in the litter without moving.

At Wolf’s entrance the German youth, like a drowning man who sees a
friend on the shore, shrieked an entreaty to save him from the murderers
who wanted to drag him to death. The young knight gazed compassionately
at the lad’s flushed face, and, after a brief pause of reflection,
proposed committing the sufferers to the care of the Knights
Hospitallers.

This removed the burden from the young Rhinelander’s tortured soul, yet
he insisted, with passionate impetuosity, upon having his master and the
nobleman accompany him, that the physician whom, in his fevered fancy,
he regarded as his mortal foe, should not drag him to the pest-house
after all.

Both musicians yielded to his wish. On the way Appenzelder held
the lad’s burning hand in his own, and never wearied of talking
affectionately to him. Not until after he had seen his charges, with the
physician’s assistance, comfortably lodged, and had left the house of
the Hospitallers, did he permit himself to test the almost incredible
news which Sir Wolf Hartschwert had brought him.

With what fiery zeal Wolf persuaded him, how convincing was his
assurance that a substitute for Johann of Cologne, and a most admirable
one, was actually to be found here in Ratisbon!

He had no need to seek for fitting words in the description of Barbara
Blomberg, the melody of her voice, and her admirable training. The fact
that she was a woman, he protested, need not be considered, nay, it
might be kept secret. The Church, it is true, prohibited the assistance
of women, but the matter here was simply the execution of songs in a
private house.

At first Appenzelder listened grumbling, and shaking his head in
dissent, but soon the proposal seemed worth heeding; nay, when he heard
that the singer, whose talent and skill the quiet, intelligent German
praised so highly, owed her training to his countryman, Damian Feys,
whom he knew, he began to ask questions with, increasing interest.
But, ere Wolf had answered the first queries, some one else made his
appearance on the Haid, and the very person who was best fitted to give
information about Barbara--her teacher, Feys, who had sought Gombert,
his famous Brussels companion in art, and was just taking him to a
rehearsal of the Convivium musicum. At this meeting the leader of the
boy choir, in spite of his pleasure at seeing his valued countryman and
companion in art, showed far less patience than before, for, after
the first greeting, he at once asked Feys what he thought of his pupil
Barbara. The answer was so favourable that Appenzelder eagerly accepted
the invitation to attend the rehearsal also. So the four fellow-artists
crossed the Haidplatz together, and Maestro Gombert was obliged to
remind his colleague of the boy choir that people who occupied the
conductor’s desk forgot to run on a wager.

Wolf’s legs were by no means so long as those of the tall, broad
musician, yet, in his joyous excitement, it was an easy matter to keep
pace with him. In the happy consciousness of meriting the gratitude
of the woman whom he loved, he gazed toward the New Scales, the large
building beneath whose roof she whose image filled his heart and mind
must already have found shelter.

Did she see him coming? Did she suspect who his companions were, and
what awaited her through them?

Yet, sharply as he watched for her, he could discover no sign of her
fair head behind any of the windows.

Yet Barbara, from the little room where the singers laid aside their
cloaks and wraps, had seen Wolf, with her singing master Feys and two
other gentlemen, coming toward the New Scales, and correctly guessed the
names of the slender, shorter stranger in the sable-trimmed mantle and
the big, broad-shouldered, bearded one who accompanied her friend. Wolf
had described them both, and a presentiment told her that something
great awaited her through them.

Gombert was the composer of the bird-song, and, as she remembered how
the refrain of this composition had affected Wolf the day before, she
heard the door close behind the group.

Then the desire to please, which had never left her since she earned the
first applause, seized upon her more fiercely than ever.

Of what consequence were the listeners before whom she had hitherto
sung compared with those whose footsteps were now echoing on the lowest
stairs? And, half animated by an overpowering secret impulse, she sang
the refrain “Car la saison est bonne” aloud while passing the stairs on
her way into the dancing hall, where the rehearsal was to take place.

What an artless delight in the fairest, most pleasing thing in Nature
to a sensitive young human soul this simple sentence voiced to the
Netherland musicians! It seemed to them as if the song filled the dim,
cold corridor with warmth and sunlight. Thus Gombert had heard within
his mind the praise of spring when he set it to music, but had never
before had it thus understood by any singer, reproduced by any human
voice.

The excitable man stood as if spellbound; only a curt “My God! my
God!” gave expression to his emotion. The blunter Appenzelder, on the
contrary, when the singer suddenly paused and a door closed behind her,
exclaimed: “The deuce, that’s fine!--If that were your helper in need,
Sir Wolf, all would be well!”

“It is,” replied Wolf proudly, with sparkling eyes; but the honest old
fellow rushed after Barbara, held out both hands to her in his frank,
cordial way, and cried:

“Thanks, heartfelt thanks, my dear, beautiful young lady! But if you
imagine that this drop of nectar will suffice, you are mistaken. You
have awakened thirst! Now see--and Gombert will thank you too--that it
is quenched with a fuller gift of this drink of the gods.”

The Netherlanders found the table spread, and this rehearsal of the
Convivium musicum brought Barbara Blomberg the happiest hours which life
had ever bestowed.

She saw with a throbbing heart that her singing not only pleased, but
deeply stirred the heart of the greatest composer of his time, whose
name had filled her with timid reverence, and that, while listening
to her voice, the eyes of the sturdy Appenzelder, who looked as if his
broad breast was steeled against every soft emotion, glittered with
tears.

This had happened during the execution of Josquin de Pres’s “Ecce tu
pulchra es’.”

Barbara’s voice had lent a special charm to this magnificent motet,
and, when she concluded the “Quia amore langueo”--“Because I yearn for
love”--to which she had long given the preference when she felt impelled
to relieve her heart from unsatisfied yearning, she had seen Gombert
look at the choir leader, and understood the “inimitable” which was not
intended for her, but for his fellow-artist.

Hitherto she had done little without pursuing a fixed purpose, but
this time Art, and the lofty desire to serve her well, filled her
whole being. In the presence of the most famous judges she imposed the
severest demands upon herself. Doubtless she was also glad to show Wolf
what she could do, yet his absence would not have diminished an iota of
what she gave the Netherlanders. She felt proud and grateful that she
belonged to the chosen few who are permitted to express, by means of a
noble art, the loftiest and deepest feelings in the human breast. Had
not Appenzelder been compelled to interrupt the rehearsal, she would
gladly have sung on and on to exhaustion.

She did not yet suspect what awaited her when, in well-chosen yet
cordial words, Gombert expressed his appreciation.

She neither saw nor heard the fellow-singers who surrounded her; nay,
when Dr. Hiltner, the syndic’s, daughter, seventeen years old, who had
long looked up to her with girlish enthusiasm, pressed forward to her
side, and her charming mother, sincerely pleased, followed more quietly,
when others imitated their example and expressed genuine gratification
or made pretty speeches, Barbara scarcely distinguished the one from the
other, honest good will from bitter envy.

She did not fully recover her composure until Appenzelder came up to her
and held out his large hand.

Clasping it with a smile, she permitted the old musician to hold her
little right hand, while in a low tone, pointing to Wolf, who had
followed him, he said firmly:

“May I believe the knight? Would you be induced to bestow your
magnificent art upon an ardent old admirer like myself, though to-day
only as leader of the voices in the boy choir--”

Here Wolf, who had noticed an expression of refusal upon Barbara’s lips,
interrupted him by completing the sentence with the words, addressed
to her, “In order to let his Majesty the Emperor enjoy what delights us
here?”

The blood receded from Barbara’s cheeks, and, as she clung to the
window-sill for support, it seemed as though some magic spell had
conveyed her to the summit of the highest steeple. Below her yawned the
dizzy gulf of space, and the air was filled with a rain of sceptres,
crowns, and golden chains of honour falling upon ermine and purple robes
on the ground below.

But after a few seconds this illusion vanished, and, ere Wolf could
spring to the assistance of the pallid girl, she was already passing her
kerchief across her brow.

Then, drawing a long breath, she gave the companion of her childhood a
grateful glance, and said to Appenzelder:

“Dispose of my powers as you deem best,” adding, after a brief pause,
“Of course, with my father’s consent.”

Appenzelder, as if rescued, shook her hand again, this time with so
strong a pressure that it hurt her. Yet her blue eyes sparkled as
brightly as if her soul no longer had room for pain or sorrow. After
Barbara had made various arrangements with the choir leader, it seemed
to her as though the sunny, blissful spring, which her song had just
celebrated so exquisitely, had also made its joyous entry into the
narrow domain of her life.

On the way home she thanked the friend who accompanied her with the
affectionate warmth of the days of her childhood, nay, even more eagerly
and tenderly; and when, on reaching the second story of the cantor
house, he took leave of her, she kissed his cheek, unasked, calling down
the stairs as she ran up:

“There is your reward! But, in return, you will accompany me first to
the rehearsal with the singing boys, and then--if you had not arranged
it yourself you would never believe it--go to the Golden Cross, to the
Emperor Charles.”




CHAPTER X.

The Emperor’s table was laid in one of the lower rooms of the Golden
Cross. The orchestra and the boy choir had been stationed in Saint
Leonhard’s chapel. A wide door led from the consecrated chamber, spanned
by a vaulted roof, into the dining-room. When it was opened, the music
and singing would pour in a full flood to those seated around the board.

Shortly before midnight everything in kitchen and cellar was ready for
the royal couple. The wax candles and lamps were already lighted when
Queen Mary prepared to bring her imperial brother to the surprise which
she had planned, and whose influence she eagerly anticipated.

The Emperor had received the last report half an hour before, and then
commissioned his physician, who had again warned him against the excess
of work, to protect him from interruption--he desired to have an hour
alone.

Dr. Mathys had fulfilled this order with the utmost strictness. Even the
English ambassador was dismissed. The members of the royal household and
the nobles who during their stay in Ratisbon crowded around the royal
brother and sister, and even at this late hour filled the rooms and
corridors of the spacious building with busy life, had been commanded to
step lightly and keep silent.

The lord chamberlain, Count Heinrich of Nassau, saw that nothing was
stirring near the apartment of his imperial master, and the stewards,
Quijada and Malfalconnet, aided him. But they could not prevent the
barking of Queen Mary’s hunting dogs, and when their royal mistress
followed them to accompany her illustrious brother to the dining-hall,
Malfalconnet ventured to remark that the lion, when he retires to
solitude, sometimes values rest more than the presence of even the most
beloved and adorable member of his noble race; but the regent quickly
retorted that she had not yet reached lion hunting, but she knew that
even the king of beasts possessed a stomach, and would be glad to have
rest seasoned with dainty food.

“The banquet is ready,” added Count Buren, and Malfalconnet, with a low
bow, said:

“And a portion of it is the covered chiming dish with which your
Majesty’s love and wisdom intends to surprise the illustrious epicure.”

While speaking, he cautiously opened the door of the royal apartment,
but the dogs were held back by the pages who had carried the train of
the festal robe. Two others zealously aided her to throw the trailing
brocade across her arm, and in this manner she entered her distinguished
brother’s chamber.

This was so deep that a short walk was necessary to reach the window
near which the Emperor sat. The office of lighting the vast room was
assigned to a dozen wax candles in a silver candelabrum, but they were
so inadequate to the task that neither the mythological scenes on the
Brabant Gobelin curtains with which the walls were hung, nor the very
scanty furniture of the remainder of the long chamber could be seen from
the door.

Thus the prevailing dusk concealed the surroundings of the great monarch
who was resting there, and the only object visible to the entering
Queen was his figure illumined by the light. In her soul everything
else receded far behind the person, welfare, and pleasure of this mighty
sovereign. Yet she had already crossed half the room, and her entrance
still remained unnoticed.

The Emperor Charles, with his forehead resting on his hand, sat absorbed
in thought before the papers which had occupied his attention. How
mournful he looked, what sorrowful thoughts were doubtless again
burdening that anxious brain! Never before had he seemed to his sister
so old.

Perhaps it was the ceaseless planning and pondering of the statesman and
general which, during the last few years, had thinned the light-brown
hair at the corners of the brow.

The resting ruler now seemed to have brought his mind to repose also,
for every emotion had vanished from his pallid face. Even the sharply
cut nostrils of the long nose, which usually moved swiftly, were
perfectly still. The heavy chin, framed by a thin, closely clipped
beard, had sunk upon the high ruff as if for support, and the thick,
loosely hanging lower lip appeared to have lost its elasticity.

In this hour of rest and relaxation this tireless and successful
sovereign, utterly exhausted, had even relinquished seeming what he
was; his brown hair framed his brow and temples in a tangled, disordered
mass; the lacings of his velvet doublet were loosened; a shabby woollen
coverlet of anything but imperial appearance was wound around his lower
limbs, and the foot in which the gout throbbed and ached rested on his
sleeping hound, and was wrapped in the cloths which his valet Adrian
found at hand after the Venetian ambassador, the confessor, and the
leech had left his master.

It pierced his sister to the heart to see her mighty brother, upon whose
dominions, it was said, the sun never set, in this guise.

Her glance rested sorrowfully upon him a long time, but even when she
moved several paces nearer he retained the same motionless rigidity
which had seized upon him and even communicated itself to the dog. The
animal knew the regent, and did not let her disturb its repose.

Then a terrible fear assailed her, and the image of the Cid Campeador
who, mounted on horseback, went swaying on his steed to meet the foe,
rose before her.

“Your Majesty,” then again “Your Majesty,” she called in a low tone,
that she might not startle him; but the answer for which she waited in
breathless suspense did not come, and now the anxious dread that filled
her sisterly heart forced from her lips the cry, “Carlos!” and once more
“Carlos!”

The dog stirred, and at the same time the Emperor raised his bowed head
and turned toward his sister.

Drawing a long breath, as if relieved from a heavy burden, she hastened
to his side, and, clasping his delicately formed hand, kissed it with
passionate tenderness; but the Emperor withdrew it, saying with a
mournful smile, which gave his rigid countenance a new and more winning
expression, in the Castilian language in which he always addressed her:

“Why are you so agitated, Querida? Did the sight of the silent brother
alarm the sister? Ay, darling, there are some things more terrible than
the wild boar at which the brave huntress hurls her spear. Our mother’s
bequest----”

Queen Mary, with hands outstretched beseechingly, bowed the knee before
him; but he raised her with more strength than would have been expected
from him just before, and, sighing faintly, continued:

“There are hours, Mary, when the demon that overpowered the mother
stretches his talons toward the son also. But, in spite of his satanic
origin, he is a cowardly wight, and a loving face, a tender word, drives
him away.”

“Then may my coming be blessed!” she answered warmly. “Yet it can
scarcely be a demon or any being of mortal mould that is spoiling the
life happiness of my beloved brother and sovereign lord. After all, they
are tolerably alike in the main point, and what semblance would the son
of hell wear that dares to assail the most powerful and vigorous mind
of all the ages, and yet is seized with panic terror at the glance of a
feeble woman? Whoever knows the anxieties which have recently burdened
your Majesty, and the wide range of the decision to which the course
of events is urging you, can not wonder if, as just now, your cheerful
spirits desert you. No demons or evil creatures of that sort, Heaven
knows, are needed to accomplish it.”

“Certainly not,” replied the Emperor. “Yet it does not matter what name
is borne by the unconquerable power which poisons with horrible images
the few hours of repose allotted to the solitary man who is bereft of
love and joy. But let us drop the subject! When you appear and raise
your voice, it seems as though all gloomy thoughts heard the view
hallo which drives your stags and roes back into their coverts, Mary. I
suppose you have come to summon me to the table?”

The Queen assented, and now he could not prevent her kissing his hand.
Then she seized the dainty little bell on the table to ring for the
valet Adrian; but the Emperor Charles stopped her with the exclamation:

“Never mind him. I will go with you as I am, if you do not object to
sharing your meal with such a scarecrow of a man. Only permit me to lock
up these papers.”

“From Rome?” asked the regent eagerly.

“That is easily discerned,” replied the Emperor. “New and amazingly
favourable promises. Nothing is required of me except the trifling
obligation to allow the Protestants nothing in religious affairs
which the Pope or the Council do not approve. If I agree to accept the
promises, every one will think that I have the advantage, and yet, if
the contract is made, it is tearing from the sky the political polestar
of many a lustrum, and burying one of my clearest, ripest, most sacred
hopes.”

Here the startled Queen interrupted him: “That would surely, inevitably
be the evil fruit which would grow from such a treaty. It would deliver
to the Pope, with fettered hands, this very Council which your Majesty
so confidently expected would remove or diminish, in orderly methods,
the abuses which are urging so many Christians to abandon the Catholic
Church. How often I have heard even her most faithful sons acknowledge
that such abuses exist! But if you make the alliance, the self-interest
of the hierarchy will know how to prevent the introduction of even a
single vigorous amendment, and, instead of the conqueror of the hydra of
abuse, your Majesty will render yourself its guardian.”

“And,” added the Emperor affectionately--he still retained his seat
at the writing table--“this alliance, moreover, would force me to the
painful necessity of opposing the earnest wish of the dearest, fairest,
and wisest of my sisters.”

“Because it would render war with the evangelical princes inevitable,”
 cried the Queen excitedly. “Oh, your Majesty, you know that the
heretical movement, which is making life a burden to me in my provinces,
is going much too far for me, as well as for you here in Germany; nay,
that it is hateful to me, because I value nothing more than our holy
Church, her greatness and unity. But would it really redound to her
welfare if the schism now existing, and which you yourself expected to
heal through the Council, should by this very Council be embittered and
even perhaps perpetuated? For a long time nothing has seemed to me more
execrable than this war. Your Majesty knows that, and therefore my lord
and brother can not be vexed with me if I remind him of the hour when, a
few months ago, he promised to avoid it and do all in his power to
bring what relates to religious matters in these German countries to a
peaceful conclusion.”

The Emperor looked his sister full in the face, and, while struggling to
his feet, said with majestic dignity:

“And I have never given your Highness occasion to doubt my word.” Then,
changing his tone, he continued kindly: “No means--I repeat it--shall
remain untried to preserve peace. I am in earnest, child, though there
are now many reasons for breaking the promise. I put them together on
the long list yonder, and the Spaniards at the court add new ones every
hour. If you care to know them----”

Here he hesitated, because the gout in his foot gave him a sharper
twinge; but the Queen availed herself of the pause to exclaim: “I think
I am aware of them. It is especially hard just now for the statesman and
soldier to keep the sword in the sheath, because Rome offers more than
ever, because at the present time no serious opposition is to be feared
from the most important states, and because the princes of the empire
have neglected nothing which could rouse the resentment of my imperial
brother. I know all this, and yet it is as firmly established as Alpine
mountains----”

Here a low laugh escaped the Emperor’s lips.

“The political course which could be thus firmly established is to be
found, you experienced regent, only in one place--the strong imagination
of a high hearted woman, who desires to accomplish what she deems right.
I, too, you may believe me, am opposed to this war, and, as matters
stand now, the German renegades, rather than we, may expect a glorious
result. But, nevertheless, it may happen that I shall be compelled to
ask you to give me back my promise.”

“I should like to see the person who could compel my august brother to
undertake anything against his imperial will,” the Queen passionately
interrupted.

“We will hope that this superior being may not appear only too soon,”
 replied the Emperor, smiling bitterly. “The invincible oppressor
bears the name of unexpected circumstances; I encountered one of his
harbingers to-day. There lie the documents. Do you know to what those
miserable papers force me, the Emperor?--ay, force, I repeat it. To
nothing less, Mary, than consciously to deal a blow in the face of
justice, whose defender I ought and desire to be. I am not exaggerating,
for I am withdrawing a fratricide from the courts, nay, am paving the
way for him to evade punishment.”

“You mean Alfonso Diaz, who had his brother murdered by a hired
assassin because he abandoned the holy Church and accepted the Lutheran
religion,” said the Queen sorrowfully. “Malvenda was just telling
me----”

“He was the instigator of the crime,” interrupted the Emperor. “Now he
rejoices in it as a deed well pleasing to God, and many thousands, I
know, agree with him. And I? Had Juan Diaz been a German Johannes or
Hans, the Emperor Charles would have made Alfonso expiate his crime
upon the block this very day. But the brothers were Spaniards, and that
alters the case.”

With this sentence, which fell from his lips in firm, resolute tones,
his bearing regained its old decision, and his eyes met his sister’s
with a flashing glance as he continued:

“The seed which here in the North, in carefully prepared soil and under
the fostering care of men only too skilful and ready for conflict, took
deep root in the domain of religion, which we were obliged to tolerate
because it grew too rapidly and strongly for us to extirpate or crush
it without depopulating a great empire and jeopardizing other very
important matters, would mean ruin to our Spain. Whoever dared to
transplant the heresy to her soil would be the most infamous of the
corrupters of a nation, for the holy Church and the kingdom of Spain
are one. The mere thought of a Juan Diaz, who had absorbed the heretical
Lutheran doctrine here, returning home to infect the hearts of the
Castilians with its venom, makes my blood boil also. Therefore, for the
sake of Spain, a higher justice compels me to offend the secular one.
The people beyond the Pyrenees shall learn that, even for the brother,
it is no sin, but a duty, to shorten the life of the brother who
abandoned the holy Church. Let Alfonso Diaz strive to obtain absolution.
It will not be difficult. He can sleep calmly, so far as the judges are
concerned who dispense justice in the name of Charles V.”

As he spoke he waved his hand to repel the hound which, when he raised
his voice, had pressed closer to him, and glanced at the artistically
wrought Nuremberg clocks on the writing table, two of which struck the
hour at the same time. Then he himself seized the little bell, rang it,
and permitted the valet Adrian to brush his hair and make the necessary
changes in his dress.

Then he invited his sister to accompany him to the table.

Walking without a shoe was difficult, and, when he saw the Queen look
down sorrowfully at the cloths which swathed the foot, he said while
toiling on:

“Imagine that we have been hunting and the boot remained stuck in the
mud. I am sure of indulgence from you. As to the others, even with only
one shoe I am still the Emperor.”

He opened the door as he spoke, and, while the valet held the hound
back, the Emperor, with chivalrous courtesy, insisted that his sister
should precede him, though she resisted until Baron Malfalconnet, with a
low bow to the royal dame, said:

“The meal is served, your Majesty, and if you lead the way you will
protect our Emperor and sovereign lord from the unworthy suspicion of
wishing to be first at the trencher.”

He motioned toward the threshold as he uttered the words, but Charles,
who often had a ready answer for the baron’s jests, followed his sister
in silence with a clouded brow.

Leaning on her arm and the crutch which Quijada had mutely presented
to him, Charles cautiously descended the stairs. He had indignantly
rejected the leech’s proposal to use a litter in the house also, if the
gout tortured him.




CHAPTER XI.

Majesty, whose nature demands that people should look up to it, shuns
the downward glance of compassion. Yet during this walk the Emperor
Charles, even at the risk of presenting a pitiable spectacle, would
gladly have availed himself of the litter.

He, who had cherished the proud feeling of uniting in himself, his own
imperial power, the temporal and ecclesiastical sovereignty over all
Christendom, would now willingly have changed places with the bronzed,
sinewy halberdiers who were presenting arms to him along the sides of
the staircase. Yet he waved back Luis Quijada with an angry glance and
the sharp query, “Who summoned you?” when, in an attitude of humble
entreaty, he ventured to offer him the support of his strong arm. Still,
pain compelled him to pause at every third step, and ever and anon to
lean upon the strong hip of his royal sister.

Queen Mary gladly rendered him the service, and, as she gazed into
his face, wan with anxiety and suffering, and thought of the beautiful
surprise which she had in store, she waved back, unnoticed by her royal
brother, the pages and courtiers who were following close behind. Then
looking up at him, she murmured:

“How you must suffer, Carlos! But happiness will surely follow the
martyrdom. Only a few steps, a few minutes more, and you will again look
life in the face with joyous courage. You will not believe it? Yet it is
true. I would even be inclined to wager my own salvation upon it.”

The Emperor shook his head dejectedly, and answered bitterly:

“Such things should not be trifled with; besides, you would lose your
wager. Joyous courage, Querida, was buried long ago, and too many cares
insure its having no resurrection. The good gifts which Heaven formerly
permitted me to enjoy have lost their zest; instead of bread, it now
gives me stones. The best enjoyment it still grants me--I am honest
and not ungrateful in saying so--is a well-prepared meal. Laugh, if you
choose! If moralists and philosophers heard me, they would frown. But
the consumption of good things affords them pleasure too. It’s a pity
that satiety so speedily ends it.”

While speaking, he again descended a few steps, but the Queen,
supporting him with the utmost solicitude, answered cheerily:

“The baser senses, with taste at their head, and the higher ones of
sight and hearing, I know, are all placed by your Majesty in the same
regiment, with equal rank; your obedient servant, on the contrary,
bestows the commissions of officers only on the higher ones. That seems
to me the correct way, and I don’t relinquish the hope of winning for
it the approval of the greatest general and most tasteful connoisseur of
life.”

“If the new cook keeps his promise, certainly not,” replied Charles,
entering into his sister’s tone. “De Rye asserts that he is peerless. We
shall see. As to the senses, they all have an equal share in enabling us
to receive our impressions and form an opinion from them. Why should
the tongue and the palate--But stay! Who the devil can philosophize with
such twinges in the foot?”

“Besides, that can be done much better,” replied the Queen, patting
the sufferer’s arm affectionately, “while the five unequal brothers are
performing the duties of their offices. The saints be praised! Here we
are at the bottom. No, Carlos, no! Not through the chapel! The stone
flags there are so hard and cold.”

As she spoke she guided him around it into the dining-room, where a
large table stood ready for the monarch’s personal suite and a smaller
one for his sister and himself.

The tortured sovereign, still under the influence of the suffering which
he had endured, crossed himself and sat down. Quijada and young Count
Tassis, the Emperor’s favourite page, placed the gouty foot in the most
comfortable position, and Count Buren, the chamberlain, presented the
menu. Charles instantly scanned the list of dishes, and his face
clouded still more as he missed the highly seasoned game pasty which the
culinary artist had proposed and he had approved. Queen Mary had ordered
that it should be omitted, because Dr. Mathys had pronounced it poison
for the gouty patient, and she confessed the offence.

This was done with the frank affection with which she treated her
brother, but Charles, after the first few words, interrupted her,
harshly forbidding any interference, even hers, in matters which
concerned himself alone, and in the same breath commanded Count Buren to
see that the dish should still be made. Then, as if to show his sister
how little he cared for her opposition, he seized the crystal jug with
his own hand, without waiting for the cup-bearer behind him, filled the
goblet with fiery Xeres wine, and hurriedly drained it, though the
leech had forbidden him, while suffering from the gout, to do more than
moisten his lips with the heating liquor.

The eyes of the royal huntress, though she was by no means unduly
soft-hearted, grew dim with tears. This was her brother’s gratitude for
the faithful care which she bestowed upon him! Who could tell whether
her surprise, instead of pleasing him, might not rouse his anger? He
was still frowning as though the greatest injury had been inflicted upon
him, and his sister’s tearful eyes led him to exclaim wrathfully, as if
he wished to palliate his unchivalrous indignation to a lady:

“I am deprived of one pleasure after another, and the little enjoyment
remaining is lessened wherever it can be. Who has heavier loads of
anxiety to endure?--yet you spoil my recreation during the brief hours
when I succeed in casting off the burden.”

Here he paused and obstinately grasped the golden handle of the pitcher
again. The Queen remained silent. Contradiction would have made the
obdurate sovereign empty another goblet also. Even a look of entreaty
would have been out of place on this occasion. So she fixed her eyes
mutely and sadly upon her silver plate; but even her silence irritated
the Emperor, and he was about to give fresh expression to his
ill-humour, when the doors of the chapel opposite to him opened, and the
surprise began.

The signal for the commencement of the singing had been the delivery
of the first dish from the steward to one of the great nobles, who
presented it to their Majesties.

The Queen’s face brightened, and tears of heartfelt joy, instead of
grief and disappointment, now moistened her eyes, for if ever a surprise
had accomplished the purpose desired it was this one.

Charles was gazing, as if the gates of Paradise had opened before him,
toward the chapel doors, whence Maestro Gombert’s Benedictio Mensae, a
melody entirely new to him, was pouring like a holy benediction, devout
yet cheering, sometimes solemn, anon full of joy.

The lines of anxiety vanished from his brow as if at the spell of a
magician. The dull eyes gained a brilliant, reverent light, the bent
figure straightened itself. He seemed to his sister ten years younger.
She saw in his every feature how deeply the music had affected him.

She knew her imperial brother. Had not his heart and soul been fully
absorbed by the flood of pure and noble tones which so unexpectedly
streamed toward him, his eyes would have been at least briefly attracted
by the dish which Count Krockow more than once presented, for it
contained an oyster ragout which a mounted messenger had brought that
noon from the Baltic Sea to the city on the Danube.

Yet many long minutes elapsed ere he noticed the dish, though it was one
of his favourite viands. Barbara’s song stirred the imperial lover
of music at the nocturnal banquet just as it had thrilled the great
musicians a few hours before. He thought that he had never heard
anything more exquisite, and when the Benedictio Mensa: died away he
clasped his sister’s hand, raised it two or three times to his lips,
and thanked her with such affectionate warmth that she blessed the
accomplishment of her happy idea, and willingly forgot the unpleasant
moments she had just undergone.

Now, as if completely transformed, he wished to be told who had had the
lucky thought of summoning his orchestra and her boy choir, and how the
plan had been executed; and when he had heard the story, he fervently
praised the delicacy of feeling and true sportsmanlike energy of her
strong and loving woman’s heart.

The court orchestra gave its best work, and so did the new head cook.
The pheasant stuffed with snails and the truffle sauce with it seemed
delicious to the sovereign, who called the dish a triumph of the
culinary art of the Netherlands. The burden of anxieties and the pangs
inflicted by the gout seemed to be forgotten, and when the orchestra
ceased he asked to hear the boy choir again.

This time it gave the most beautiful portion of Joscluin de Pres’s hymn
to the Virgin, “Ecce tu pulchra es”; and when Barbara’s “Quia amore
langueo” reached his ear and heart with its love-yearning melody, he
nodded to his sister with wondering delight, and then listened, as if
rapt from the world, until the last notes of the motet died away.

Where had Appenzelder discovered the marvellous boy who sang this “Quia
amore langueo”? He sent Don Luis Quijada to assure the leader and the
young singer of his warmest approbation, and then permitted the Queen
also to seek the choir and its leader to ask whom the latter had
succeeded in obtaining in the place of the lad from Cologne, whom he had
often heard sing the “tu pulchra es,” but with incomparably less depth
of feeling.

When she returned she informed the Emperor of the misfortune which had
befallen the two boys, and how successful Appenzelder had been in the
choice of a substitute. Yet she still concealed the fact that a girl was
now the leader of his choir, for, kindly as her brother nodded to her
when she took her place at the table again, no one could tell how he
would regard this anomaly.

Besides, the next day would be the 1st of May, the anniversary of the
death of his wife Isabella, who had passed away from earth seven years
before, and the more she herself had been surprised by the rare and
singular beauty of the fair-haired songstress, the less could she
venture on that day or the morrow to blend with the memories of the
departed Queen the image of another woman who possessed such unusual
charms. The Emperor had already asked her a few questions about the
young singers, and learned that the bell-like weaker voice, which
harmonized so exquisitely with that of the invalid Johannes’s
substitute, belonged to the little Maltese lad Hannibal, whose darling
wish, through Wolf’s intercession, had been fulfilled. His inquiries,
however, were interrupted by a fresh performance of the boy choir.

This again extorted enthusiastic applause from the sovereign, and when,
while he was still shouting “Brava!” the highly seasoned game pasty
which meanwhile, despite the regent’s former prohibition, had been
prepared, and now, beautifully browned, rose from a garland of the most
tempting accessories, was offered, he waved it away. As he did so his
eyes sought his sister’s, and his expressive features told her that he
was imposing this sacrifice upon himself for her sake.

It was long since he had bestowed a fairer gift. True, in this mood, it
seemed impossible for him to refrain from the wine. It enlivened him and
doubled the unexpected pleasure. Unfortunately, he was to atone only too
speedily for this offence against medical advice, for his heated blood
increased the twinges of the gout to such a degree that he was compelled
to relinquish his desire to listen to the exquisite singing longer.

Groaning, he suffered himself--this time in a litter--to be carried back
to his chamber, where, in spite of the pangs that tortured him, he
asked for the letter in which Granvelle informed his royal master every
evening what he thought of the political affairs to be settled the
next day. Master Adrian, the valet, had just brought it, but this time
Charles glanced over the important expressions of opinion given by the
young minister swiftly and without deeper examination. The saying that
the Emperor could not dispense with him, but he might do without the
Emperor, had originally applied to his father, whose position he filled
to the monarch’s satisfaction in every respect.

The confessor had reminded the sovereign of the anniversary which had
already dawned, and which he was accustomed to celebrate in his own way.

Very early in the morning, after a few hours spent in suffering, he
heard mass, and then remained for hours in the sable-draped room where
he communed with himself alone.

The regent knew that on this memorable day he would not be seen even by
her. The success of the surprise afforded a guarantee that music would
supply her place to him on the morrow also, and ere she left him she
requested a short leave of absence to enjoy the hunting for which she
longed, and permission to take his major-d

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