comfortably.

At last Charles passed his handkerchief across his perspiring brow, and
called to the majordomo.

Quijada eagerly approached, and the valet was respectfully leaving the
room, but the Emperor's summons stopped him.

"I have something," Charles began, no longer able to maintain complete
control over his voice, which was sometimes interrupted by the shortness
of breath that had recently attacked him, "to say to you also--"

Here he hesitated, pointed to the window which overlooked the park, then,
with a keen glance at the valet's face, continued:

"A ghost wanders about there. I have already seen it several times under
the trees. True, it avoided approaching me. What still remains useful in
this miserable body! But my eyes are sharp yet, and I recognised the
spectre--it is the Ratisbon singer."

"Your Majesty knows," replied Quijada, "what befell her after the birth
of the child, and that she is now living here in Brussels; but I was
strictly forbidden to mention her name in your Majesty's presence."

"That command closed my lips also," said the valet.

"But what the hearing rejected forced itself upon the sight," remarked
Charles, gazing fixedly into vacancy. "Wherever I appear in public I see
this woman, always this woman! It is not only the basilisk's eye that has
constraining power. I can not help perceiving her, yet I have as little
desire to meet her gaze as to encounter vanity, worldly pleasure, folly,
sin."

"Then," cried Quijada angrily, "it will be advisable to transfer her
husband, who is in your Majesty's service, from here to Andalusia or to
the New World."

"As if she would accompany him!" exclaimed the monarch with a scornful
laugh. "No, my friend. This woman did not marry for her own pleasure, but
to cause me sorrow or indignation. She succeeded, too, to a certain
extent; but I do not war with women, least of all with one who is so
unhappy. If we send her husband--who, moreover, is a useful
fellow--across the ocean, she will stay here in Brussels, and we shall
fare like the maid-servants who killed the cocks, and were then waked by
the mistress of the house still earlier than before. Besides, one who
earnestly seeks his true salvation will not remove from his path such a
living memento, such a walking monitor of past sins and follies; and,
finally, this woman is not wholly wrong in deeming herself an unusual
person, cruelly as Heaven has destroyed her best gift. On no account--you