the world-weary earthly pilgrim to lay aside the purple and return to
Spain.

Though Barbara at this time rarely left her own fireside, her husband
might often have wished that she would return to the conduct of the
previous winter, for he perceived the torturing anxiety which was
consuming her.

She could gaze for hours into vacancy, absorbed in profound meditation
and reveries, or play on the harp and lute, softly humming old songs to
herself. If at such times Pyramus asked, lovingly and modestly, that he
might not expose himself to an angry rebuff, what was burdening her soul,
his wife gave evasive answers or told him about the physician's advice,
and described how different the lives of both would be if she could
regain the lost melody of her voice. But when he, who did not grudge the
woman he loved the very best of everything, joyfully offered from his
savings the sum necessary to send her and Frau Lamperi to Ems, in order,
if possible, to commence the cure at once, she asserted that, for many
reasons, she could not begin this summer the treatment which promised so
much. True, the bare thought that if might once again be allotted to her
to raise her heart in song filled her with the same blissful hope as
ever; but if the report, which constantly grew more definite, did not
deceive, the Emperor's formal abdication was close at hand, and to attend
this great event seemed to her a duty of the heart, a necessity which she
could not avoid. In many a quiet hour she told herself that Charles, when
he had divested himself of all his honours and become a mere man like the
rest of the world, would draw nearer to her boy, and through him to her.
As an ordinary mortal, he would be able to love, like every other father,
the child that attracted him to Spain. If in his life of meditation, far
from the tumult of the world, the strife for knowledge should lead him to
look back into the past, and in doing so he again recalled the days to
which he owed his greatest happiness, could he help remembering her and
her singing?

How often she had heard that the knowledge of self was the highest goal
of thought to the philosopher, and as such Charles would certainly retire
into seclusion, and, as surely as she desired to be saved, he had wronged
her and must then perceive it. Probably there were thousands of more
important things in which he had to bury himself, but the boy would
remind him of her and the injury which he had done.

Ne