s for us to
discuss."

As he spoke he rang the bell on the table at his side, and Hannibal
obeyed his master's summons. In doing so he passed Barbara, who started
as if bewildered when she heard him approach.

He went up to her in great surprise, but ere he could utter the first
words she clutched his arm, whispering: "I am going, Hannibal. His
Eminence did not entirely forget me. If he can receive me, send word to
my house."

Scarcely able to control herself, Barbara set out on her way home. The
words she had heard had shaken the depths of her soul like an earthquake.

The news that Charles intended to confine in a monastery the boy whom she
had given up to him that he might bestow upon him whatever lay within his
imperial power poisoned her joy in the future. How often this man lead
inflicted bleeding wounds upon her heart! Now he trampled it under his
cruel feet. Two convictions had lent her the strength not to despair: she
felt sure that his love for her could never have been extinguished had
the power of her art aided her to warm Charles's heart, and she was still
more positive that the father would raise to splendour and magnificence
the boy whom she had given him.

And now?

He had refused the leech's request to help her regain the divine gift to
which, according to his own confession, he owed the purest joys; and her
strong, merry child he, its own father, condemned to disappear and wither
in the imprisonment of a cloister. This must not be, and on her way home
she formed plan after plan to prevent it.

Pyramus attributed her sometimes depressed, sometimes irritable manner to
the disappointment of her wish.

What she had just learned and had had inflicted upon her filled her with
hatred of life.

Her two boys scarcely dared to approach their mother, who, unlike her
usual self, harshly rebuffed them.

At twilight Hannibal Melas appeared, full of joyous excitement. Granvelle
sent Barbara word that the doorkeeper Mangin would show her a good seat.
His Eminence desired to be remembered to her, and said that only those
who had been closely associated with his Majesty would be admitted to
this ceremony, and he knew that she ranked among the first of these.

Barbara's features brightened and, as she saw how happy it made the
Maltese to be the bearer of so pleasant a message, she forced herself to
give a joyous expression to her gratitude. In the evening, and during a
sleepless night, she considered whethe