n after her father had left her she remained a wife who satisfied his
heart. He had learned the coolness of her nature in his first attempts to
woo her in Ratisbon and, as at that time, he whom the service frequently
detained from her for long periods regarded it as a merit.

So he wrote her father letters expressing his gratification, and the
replies which the captain sent to Brussels were in a similar tone.

Barbara had obtained for him his own house, for which he had longed. He
felt comfortable there, and what he lacked in his home he found at the
Red Cock or the Black Bear. An elderly Landshut widow, a relative, acted
as his housekeeper and provided in the best possible manner for his
comfort.

Whoever met the stately mustering officer alone or arm in arm with his
beautiful young wife, whose golden hair had grown out again, must have
believed him a happy man; and so he would have been had not some singular
habits which Barbara possessed made him uneasy. At first the reveries
into which she often sank, and which were so unlike her former self, had
been still worse. He did not know that the improvement had taken place
since she had discovered her John's abode and been permitted sometimes to
see him. Barbara's husband and father supposed that the child which she
had given to the Emperor was dead; both had placed this interpretation
upon her brief statement that it had been taken from her, and afterward
delicacy of feeling prevented any other allusion to this painful subject.

Besides this proneness to reverie, Barbara's husband was sometimes
disturbed by the carelessness with which she neglected the most important
domestic matters if there was an entertainment or exhibition which the
Emperor Charles attended; and, finally, there was something in her manner
to the children, whom Pyramus loved above all things, which disturbed,
incensed, and wounded him, yet which he felt that neither threats nor
stern interposition could change.

He possessed no defence against the reveries except a warning or a
jesting word. Delight in brilliant spectacles was doubtless natural to
her disposition, and as Pyramus not only loved but esteemed her, it was
repugnant to his feelings to watch her. Yet when, nevertheless, he once
followed her steps, he had found her, according to her expressed
intention, among other women in St. Gudule's Cathedral. Her eyes, which
he watched intently, were constantly turned toward the great personages
whos