other man
his master's heart and every look. Barbara, too, believed her son no less
confidently, and as the shout of victory reaches combatants lying on the
ground, wounded by lances and arrows, the cry of a secret voice within
her soul, sorely as she was stricken, great as was the sacrifice and
suffering which she had imposed upon herself, called upon her to rejoice
in the highest of all gifts--the love of her child, to whom hitherto she
had been only a dreaded stranger.

She could not yet obtain a clear insight into the result of the promise
which she had given her son; it seemed as though a veil was drawn over
her active mind.

Yet again and again she asked herself what power could have induced her
to grant so quickly and unconditionally to the son a demand which in her
youth she would have refused, with defiant opposition, even to his
ardently loved father. But she took as little trouble to find the answer
as she felt regret for her compliance.

The world to which she returned after this hour had gained a new aspect.
She had not understood the real nature of the former one. The exclamation
which her son's confession had elicited she still believed after long
reflection. What she had deemed great, was small; what had seemed to her
light and brilliant, was dark. What she had considered worthy of the
greatest sacrifice was petty and trivial; no fountain of joy, but a
fierce torrent of new wishes constantly surpassing one another. With
their boundless extent they had of necessity remained unfulfilled. Thus
woe on woe, and at the same time the painfully paralyzing feeling of the
hostility of Fate had been evoked from its surges and, instead of
happiness, they had brought sorrow and suffering.

Pride in such a son had been the delight of her life; henceforth, she
felt it, she must seek her happiness, her joys, elsewhere, and she knew
also where, and realized that she was receiving higher for smaller
things. Instead of sharing his renown, she had gained the right to share
his misfortune and his griefs.

The more and the more eagerly she pondered in silence, the more surely
she perceived that earthly glory and magnificence, which she had thought
the greatest blessings, were only a series of sunbeams, swiftly following
one another, which would be clouded by one shadow after the other until
darkness and oblivion ingulfed them.

Like every outward splendour, fame dazzles the eyes of men. It would dim
her son's--she kne