"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