come up
the Trausnitz to make all sorts of arrangements, for something unusual
was to happen which would bring even his Majesty the Emperor here.

These tidings startled Barbara.

Suppose that Charles was now coming to influence her by the heavy weight
of his personality; suppose he----

But Frau Traut gave her no time to yield to these and other fears and
hopes; she added, in a quiet tone, that his Majesty merely intended to
invest his son-in-law, Ottavio Farnese, Duke of Parma, with the Order of
the Golden Fleece in the Trausnitz courtyard. It would be a magnificent
spectacle, and Barbara could witness it if she desired. One of the rooms
in the second story of the ladies' wing where she lodged was still
untenanted, and her husband would be responsible if she occupied it, only
Barbara must promise not to attract attention to herself by any sound or
gesture.

She yielded to this demand with eager zeal, and when Frau Traut perceived
the girl's pale cheeks again flushed she wondered at the rapid
excitability of this singular creature, and willingly answered the long
series of questions with which she assailed her.

Barbara especially desired to hear particulars about the mother of
Margaret of Parma, the wife of Ottavio Farnese, that Johanna Van der
Gheynst who gave this daughter to the Emperor.

Then Barbara learned that she was a Netherland girl of respectable
family, but of scarcely higher rank than her own; only she had been
adopted by Count Bon Haagestraaten before the Emperor made her
acquaintance.

"Was Johanna beautiful?" Barbara eagerly interrupted.

"I think you are far handsomer," was the reply, "though she, too, was a
lovely creature."

Then Barbara wished to learn whether she was fair or dark, lively or
quiet, and, finally, whether she had consented to give up her child; and
Frau Traut answered that Johanna had done this without resistance, and
her daughter was afterward reared first by the Duchess of Savoy, and
later by Queen Mary, the regent of the Netherlands.

"How wisely the young lady acted," Frau Dubois concluded, "you yourself
know. A crown now adorns her child's head for the second time, and you
will soon see how the Emperor Charles bestows honours upon her husband.
His Majesty understood how to provide for his daughter, who is his first
child. Her former marriage, it is true, was short. Alessandro de' Medici,
to whom she was wedded at almost too early an age, was murdered scarcely
a year