Her father had failed to bend this refractory, wonderfully beautiful
iron; he had hoped to try with better fortune, but Fate had anticipated
him, and he was grateful.

Full of blossoming hopes, he now asked, with newly awakened confidence,
whether she would permit him to cross her threshold as a suitor and
become his dear and ardently worshipped wife, and the low "Yes" which he
received in response made him happy.

A few days after he married her, and journeyed with her on horseback to
the Netherlands.

On the way tidings of the battle of Muhlberg reached them. The Emperor
Charles had utterly routed the Protestants. He himself announced his
great victory in the words, "I came, I saw, and God conquered."

When Pyramus told the news to his young wife, she answered quietly, "Who
could resist the mighty monarch!"

In Brussels she learned that the Emperor had taken the Elector of Saxony
captive on the battlefield, but the Landgrave of Hesse had been betrayed
into his power by a stratagem which the Protestants branded as base
treachery, and used to fill all Germany with the bitterest hatred against
him; but here Barbara's wrath flamed forth, and she upbraided the
slanderous heretics. It angered her to have the great sovereign denied
his due reverence in her own home; but secretly she believed in the
breach of faith.