Ratisbon.

With enthusiastic love for his native land, he described the bustling
life in his beautiful, wealthy home. There music and every art
flourished; there, besides the Emperor and his august sister, were great
nobles who with cheerful lavishness patronized everything that was
beautiful and worthy of esteem; thither flocked strangers from the whole
world; there festivals were celebrated with a magnificence and joyousness
witnessed nowhere else on earth. There was the abode of freedom, joy,
and mirth.

Barbara had often wished to see the Netherlands, which the Emperor
Charles also remembered with special affection, but no one had ever thus
transported her to the midst of these flourishing provinces and this
blithesome people.

During the maestro's description her large eyes rested upon his lips as
if spellbound. She, too, must see this Brabant, and, like every newly
awakened longing, this also quickly took possession of her whole nature.
Only in the Netherlands, she thought, could she regain her lost
happiness. But what elevated this idea to a certainty in her mind was
not only the fostering of music, the spectacles and festivals, the
magnificent velvet, the rustling silk, and the gay, varied life, not only
the worthy Appenzelder and the friend at her side, but, far above all
other things, the circumstance that Brussels was the home of the Emperor
Charles, that there, there alone, she might be permitted to see again and
again, at least from a distance, the man whom she hated.

Absorbed in the Netherlands, she forgot to notice the nearest things
which presented themselves to her gaze.