to thank him either in person or by letter
in short, to avoid approaching him in any way.

The old physician had communicated this stipulation--which his royal
patient had strictly associated with the gift--to Barbara in the emphatic
manner peculiar to him, but she had listened, at first in surprise, then
with increasing indignation. The donation which, as a token of
remembrance and kind feeling, had just rendered her so happy, now
appeared like mere alms. Nay, the gift would make her inferior to the
poorest beggar, for who forbids the mendicant to utter his "May God
reward you"?

Charles kept her aloof as if she were plague-stricken. Perhaps it was
because he feared that if he saw her once he might desire a second and a
third meeting. But no matter. She would accept no aid at the cost of so
severe an offence to her pride, least of all when it came from the man
who had already wounded her soul often and painfully enough.

The startled physician perceived what was passing in her mind, and when,
not passionately as in her youth, but with cool composure, she requested
Dr. Mathys to tell his master that it would be as impossible for her to
accept a gift for which she could not express her thanks as to give alms
without wishing well to the recipient, the leech eagerly endeavoured to
persuade her to use the sum bestowed according to the donor's wish. But
Barbara firmly persisted in her refusal, and when she parted from the old
man he could not be angry with her, for, as in the garden of the little
Prebrunn castle, he could not help saying to himself that the wrong was
not wholly on the side of the independent young woman.

The result in this case was the usual one when the weaker party succeeds
in maintaining itself against the superior power of the stronger. Barbara
set out on her way home with her head proudly erect, but she soon asked
herself whether this victory was not too dearly purchased. In a few
months John was to meet his father, and then might there not be cause to
fear that the opposition which she, his mother, had offered to the
Emperor, in order to escape an offence to her own pride, would prove an
injury to the son? She stopped, hesitating; but after a brief period of
reflection, she continued her walk. What she had done might vex the
monarch, but it must rather enhance than lower her value in his eyes, and
everything depended upon that. Charles would open the path to high
honours and royal splendour to the