f she would keep the secret, and decide to commit
it to his sole charge from its arrival in the world; but, on the other
hand, he would refuse this to her and to the child if she did not agree
to impose upon herself sacrifice and silence."

At this brief, plain statement Barbara had pressed her hands upon her
temples and stretched her head far forward toward the physician. Now she
lowered her right hand, and with the question, "So this is what I must
understand?" impetuously struck herself a blow on the forehead.

The patient man again raised his voice to make the expression of the
monarch's will still plainer, but she interrupted him after the first few
words with the exclamation: "You can spare yourself this trouble, for the
meaning of the man whose message you bear is certainly evident enough.
What my poor intellect fails to comprehend is only--do you hear?--is only
where the faithless traitor gains the courage to make me so unprecedented
a demand. Hitherto I was only not wicked enough to know that there--there
was such an abyss of abominable hard-heartedness, such fiendish baseness,
such----"

Here an uncontrollable fit of coughing interrupted her, but Dr. Mathys
would have stopped her in any case; it was unendurable to him to listen
longer while the great man who was the Emperor, and whom he also honoured
as a man, was reviled with such savage recklessness.

As in so many instances, Charles's penetration had been superior to his;
for he had not failed to notice to what tremendous extremes this girl's
hasty temper could carry her. What burning, almost evil passion had
flamed in her eyes while uttering these insults! How perfectly right his
Majesty was to withdraw from all association with a woman of so
irresponsible a nature!

He repressed with difficulty the indignation which had overpowered him
until her coughing ceased, then, in a tone of stern reproof, he declared
that he could not and ought not to listen to such words. She whom the
Emperor Charles had honoured with his love would perhaps in the future
learn to recognise his decision as wise, though it might offend her now.
When she had conquered the boundless impetuosity which so ill beseemed
her, she herself would probably perceive how immeasurably deep and wide
was the gulf which separated her from the sacred person of the man who,
next to God, was the highest power on earth. Not only justice but duty
would command the head of the most illustrious family