was not there to arrange it, and she felt thoroughly
uncomfortable in the midst of this worldly magnificence and bustle.

Notwithstanding her father's presence, she had never been so desolate as
among these ladies and gentlemen, nearly all of whom were strangers.

Her sister was intimate with the other girls of her age and station,
few of whom were absent, and if Eva could have conjured her to her side
doubtless many would have joined them; but she knew no one well, and
though many greeted her, no one lingered. Everybody had friends with
whom they were on far more familiar terms. The young Countess von
Montfort, a girl of her own age and an inmate of her own home, also gave
her only a passing word. But this was agreeable to her--she disliked
Cordula's free manners.

Many who were friends of Els had gathered around Ursula Vorchtel, the
daughter of the richest man in the city, and she intentionally avoided
the Ortliebs because, before Wolff Eysvogel sued for Els's hand, he and
Ursula had been intended for each other.

Eva was just secretly vowing that this first ball should also be
the last, when the imperial magistrate, Herr Berthold Pfinzing, her
godfather, came to present her to the Emperor, who had requested to see
the little daughter of the Herr Ernst Ortlieb whose son had fallen in
battle for him. His "little saint," Herr Pfinzing added, looked no
less lovely amid the gay music of the Nuremberg pipers than kneeling in
prayer amid the notes of the organ.

Every tinge of colour had faded from Eva's cheeks, and though a few
hours before she had asked her sister what the Emperor's greatness
signified in the presence of God that she should be forced, for his
sake, to be faithless to the holiest things, now fear of the majesty of
the powerful sovereign made her breath come quicker.

How, clinging to her godfather's hand, she reached the Emperor Rudolph's
throne she could never describe, for what happened afterwards resembled
a confused dream of mingled bliss and pain, from which she was first
awakened by her father's warning that the time of departure had come.

When she raised her downcast eyes the monarch was standing before the
throne placed for him. She had been compelled to bend her head backward
in order to see his face, for his figure, seven feet in height, towered
like a statue of Roland above all who surrounded him. But when, after
the Austrian duchess, his daughter-in-law, who was scarcely beyond
childhoo