pon her shoulder,
whispering: "You can keep silence. I am going to Luxemburg. He who calls
me is one whom you saw enter the world, the hero of Lepanto. He wants his
mother. At last! at last! And I--"

Here tears stifled her voice, and obeying the desire to pour out to
another the overflowing gratitude and love which had taken possession of
her soul, she threw herself upon the gray-haired attendant's breast, and
amid her weeping exclaimed: "I shall see him with these eyes, I can clasp
his hand, I shall hear his voice--that voice--His first cry--A thousand
times, waking and sleeping, I have fancied I heard it again. Do you
remember how they took him from me, Lamperi?

"To think that I survived it! But now--now If that voice lured me to the
deepest abyss and called me away from paradise, I would go!"

The maid's old eyes also overflowed, and when Barbara read her son's
letter aloud, she cried: "Of course there can be no delay, even if,
instead of the Rassinghams, King Philip himself should send for you. And
I--may I go with you? Oh, Madame, you do not know what a sweet little
angel he was from his very birth! We were not allowed to show him to you.
And it was wise, for, had you seen him, it would have broken your poor
mother heart to give him up."

She sobbed aloud as she spoke. Barbara permitted her to accompany her,
though she had intended to take her companion, and would have preferred
to travel with the woman of noble birth.

Besides, she could have confided the care of her sick guest to Lamperi
more confidently than to the other. But the faithful old soul's wish to
see the boy whose entrance into the world she had been permitted to greet
was too justifiable for her to be able to refuse it.

How much Barbara had to do before her departure! Most of the time was
consumed by the suffering maestro and the arrangements which she had to
make for him. She did not leave his bedside until the arrival of the
sister who was to assist her companion in nursing her old friend until
her return. She certainly would not be absent long; the important things
John had to say might probably require great haste, while, on the
contrary, whatever needed time for execution could be comfortably
despatched during his stay in the Netherlands. So she assured Feys, who
regarded her as his good angel and felt her departure painfully, that she
would soon be with him again, and then gave the order to ask Hannibal
Melas, in her name, to pay frequ