the weeping child, that he might not see
her tears, and answered quickly "I predicted things, things... go, I
will tell you about it later."

He was satisfied with this answer, but she was now obliged to join the
Spaniards, and Ulrich took leave of her with a silent salutation.

CHAPTER XXVI.

The Spanish nature is contagious, thought Hans Eitelfritz, tossing on
his couch in Ulrich's tent. What a queer fellow the gay young lad has
become! Sighs are cheap with him, and every word costs a ducat. He is
worthy all honor as a soldier. If they make him Eletto, it will be worth
while to join the free army.

Ulrich had briefly told the lansquenet, how he had obtained the name
of Navarrete and how he had come from Madrid and Lepanto to the
Netherlands. Then he went to rest, but he could not sleep.

He had found his mother again. He now possessed the best gift Ruth
had asked him to beseech of the "word." The soldier's sweetheart, the
faithless wife, the companion of his rival, whom only yesterday he had
avoided, the fortune-teller, the camp-sibyl, was the woman who had given
him birth. He, who thought he had preserved his honor stainless, whose
hand grasped the sword if another looked askance at him, was the child
of one, at whom every respectable woman had the right to point her
finger. All these thoughts darted through his brain; but strangely
enough, they melted like morning mists when the sun rises, before the
feeling of joy that he had his mother again.

Her image did not rise before his memory in Zorrillo's tent, but framed
by balsams and wall-flowers. His vivid imagination made her twenty years
younger, and how beautiful she still was, how winningly she could glance
and smile. Every appreciative word, all the praises of the sibyl's
beauty, good sense and kindness, which he had heard in the camp, came
back freshly to his mind, and he would fain have started up to throw
himself on her bosom, call her his mother, hear her give him all the
sweet, pet names, which sounded so tender from her lips, and feel
the caress of her soft hands. How rich the solitary man felt, how
surpassingly rich! He had been entirely alone, deserted even by his
mother! Now he was so no longer, and pleasant dreams blended with his
ambitious plans, like golden threads in dark cloth.

When power was once his, he would build her a beautiful, cosy nest with
his share of the booty. She must leave Zorrillo, leave him to-morrow.
The little nest