Startled at her appearance, Frau Traut compelled the exhausted woman to
sit down. How dishevelled, nay, wild, Barbara, who was usually so well
dressed, looked! But she, too, that day did not present her usual dainty
appearance, and her eyes and face were reddened by weeping. Barbara
instantly noticed this, and it confirmed her conjecture. This woman,
too, was bewailing the child which the cruel despot had torn from her.

"He is on the way to Spain!" she cried to the other. "There is nothing
to conceal here."

Frau Traut started, and vehemently forbade Barbara to say even one word
more about the boy if she did not wish her to show her the door and close
it against her forever.

But this was too much for the haughty mother of the Emperor's son. The
terrible agitation of her soul forced an utterance, and in wild rebellion
she swore to the terrified woman that she would burden herself with the
sin of perjury and break the silence to which she had bound herself if
she did not confess to her where Massi was taking her boy. She would
neither seek him nor strive to get possession of him, but if she could
not imagine where and with what people he was living, she would die of
longing. She would have allowed herself to be abused and trodden under
foot in silence, but she would not suffer herself to be deprived of the
last remnant of her maternal rights.

Here Adrian himself entered the room; but Barbara was by no means calmed
by his appearance, and with a fresh outburst of wrath shrieked to his
face that he might choose whether he would confide to her, the mother,
where his master was taking the child or see her rush from here to the
market place and call out to the people what she had promised, for the