amid her weeping exclaimed: "I shall see him with these eyes, I can clasp
his hand, I shall hear his voice--that voice--His first cry--A thousand
times, waking and sleeping, I have fancied I heard it again. Do you
remember how they took him from me, Lamperi?

"To think that I survived it! But now--now If that voice lured me to the
deepest abyss and called me away from paradise, I would go!"

The maid's old eyes also overflowed, and when Barbara read her son's
letter aloud, she cried: "Of course there can be no delay, even if,
instead of the Rassinghams, King Philip himself should send for you. And
I--may I go with you? Oh, Madame, you do not know what a sweet little
angel he was from his very birth! We were not allowed to show him to
you. And it was wise, for, had you seen him, it would have broken your
poor mother heart to give him up."

She sobbed aloud as she spoke. Barbara permitted her to accompany her,
though she had intended to take her companion, and would have preferred
to travel with the woman of noble birth.

Besides, she could have confided the care of her sick guest to Lamperi
more confidently than to the other. But the faithful old soul's wish to
see the boy whose entrance into the world she had been permitted to greet
was too justifiable for her to be able to refuse it.

How much Barbara had to do before her departure! Most of the time was
consumed by the suffering maestro and the arrangements which she had to
make for him. She did not leave his bedside until the arrival of the
sister who was to assist her companion in nursing her old friend until
her return. She certainly would not be absent long; the important things