iness it led her directly to such an abyss of the
deepest woe.

What contrasts!

A day, an hour had transported her from bitter poverty and torturing
yearning to the side of the highest and greatest of monarchs, but who
could tell for how long--how soon the fall into the gulf awaited her?

A shudder ran through her frame, and a deep pity for the sweet creature
whose coloured likeness she held in her hand seized upon her.

She probably remembered her lover's refusal, and that she only needed to
allude to it to release herself from the wailing old woman, but an
invisible power sealed her lips. She was filled with an ardent desire to
help, to avert this unutterable misery, to bring aid to this child,
devoted to destruction.

To rise above everything petty, and with the imperial motto "More,
farther," before her eyes, to attain a lofty height from which to look
down upon others and show her own generosity to them, had been the
longing of her life. She was still permitted to feel herself the object
of the love of the mightiest sovereign on earth, and should she be denied
performing, by her own power, an act of deliverance to which heart and
mind urged her?

No, and again no!

She was no longer poor Wawerl!

She could and would show this, for, like an illumination, words which she
had heard the day before in the Golden Cross had flashed into her memory.

Master Wenzel Jamnitzer, the famous Nuremberg goldsmith, had addressed
them to her in the imperial apartments, where he had listened to her
singing the day before.

He had come to consult with the Emperor Charles about the diadems which
he wished to give his two nieces, the daughters of Ferdinand, King of the
Romans, who were to be married in July in Ratisbon. Their manufacture had
been intrusted to Master Jamnitzer, and after the concert the Nuremberg
artist had thanked Barbara for the pleasure which he owed her. In doing
so, he had noticed the Emperor's first gift, the magnificent star which
she wore on her breast at the side of her squarenecked dress. Examining
it with the eye of an expert, he had remarked that the central stone
alone was worth an estate.

If she deprived herself of this superb ornament, the despairing old
mother would be consoled, and the lovely child saved from hunger and
disgrace.

With Barbara, thought, resolve, and action followed one another in rapid
succession.

"You shall have what you need to-morrow," she called to the marquise,