ircumstance
only increased the sympathy which the sisters felt for their much-admired
friend.

In spite of their mother's refusal to permit them to ride to the
neighbouring town and visit Barbara, they did so, that they might try to
comfort her; but though their unfortunate cousin received them and
listened to them a short time, she earnestly entreated them to obey their
mother and not come again.

Frau Traut perceived that she not only desired to guard the inexperienced
girls from trouble, but that their visit disturbed her. The thoughts
which were in her mind so completely absorbed her that she now studiously
sought the solitude which she had formerly shunned like a misfortune.

Even Pyramus Kogel's short letter, informing her of her father's
convalescence, and the news from the seat of war which Frau Traut
communicated to her to divert her thoughts, and which she had usually
anticipated with impatient expectation, awakened only a fleeting
interest. Toward the end of the first week in September her companion
could inform her that the Emperor Charles had met the Smalcalds at
Ingolstadt and, in spite of a severe attack of the gout, had ridden--with
his aching foot in linen bandages instead of in the stirrup--from
regiment to regiment, kindling the enthusiasm of his troops by fiery
words.

Then Barbara at last listened with more interest, and asked for other
details.

Frau Dubois, to whom her husband from time to time sent messengers from
the camp, now said that the encounter had not come to an actual battle
and a positive decision, but his Majesty had heeded the shower of bullets
less than the patter of a hailstorm, and had quietly permitted Appian,
the astronomer, to explain a chart of the heavens in his tent, though the
enemy's artillery was tearing the earth around it.

But even this could not reanimate the extinguished ardour of Barbara's
soul; she had merely said calmly: "We know that he is a hero. I had
expected him to disperse the heretics as the wolf scatters the sheep and
destroy them at a single blow."

Then taking her rosary and prayer book, she went to church, as she did
daily at this time. She spent hours there, not only praying, but holding
intercourse with the image of the Madonna, from which she dill not avert
her eyes, as though it was a living being. The chaplain who had been
given to her associated with this devout tendency of his penitent the
hope that Barbara would decide to enter a convent