by a poor German copyist, a wretched, cross-eyed fellow, whom Wolf had
pointed out to her, and whose hand Barbara knew. From his pen also came
the sentence under the major-domo's name, "The Golden Cross must be
vacated during the month of April."

When Barbara had read these imperial decisions for the second and the
third time, and fully realized the meaning of every word, she clinched
her teeth and gazed steadily into vacancy for a while. Then she laughed
in such a shrill, hoarse tone that she was startled at the sound of her
own voice, and paced up and down the room with long strides.

Should she reject what the most powerful and wealthy sovereign in the
world offered with contemptible parsimony? No! It was not much, but
it would suffice for her support, and the additional gift was large
enough to afford her father a great pleasure when he came home.

Pyramus Kogel's last letter reported that his condition was improving.
Perhaps he might soon return. Then the money would enable her to weave
a joy into the sorrow that awaited him. It had always been a humiliating
thought that he had lost his own house and was obliged to live in a hired
one, and at least she could free him from that.

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