and loyal son of the Church, appeared to thrust aside the thought that the people who greeted him with such impetuous delight, and shared the two-fold festival of his family with such warm devotion, were heretics who deserved punishment.  At least he saluted with gracious friendliness the throng that lined both sides of the road, and as he passed by the garden of the little castle he even smiled, and glanced toward the building as though a pleasant memory had been awakened in his mind.  At this moment Barbara gazed into the Emperor’s face.

Those were the features which had worn so tender an expression when, for the first time, he had uttered the never-to-be-forgotten “Because I long for love,” and her yearning heart throbbed no less quickly now than on that night.  The wrong and suffering which he had inflicted upon her were forgotten.  She remembered nothing save that she loved him, that he was the greatest and, to her, the dearest of all men.

It was perfectly impossible for him to see her, but she did not think of that; and when he looked toward her with such joyous emotion, and the cheers of the populace, like a blazing fire which a gust of wind fans still higher, outstripped, as it were, themselves, she could not have helped joining in the huzzas and shouts and acclamations around her though she had been punished with imprisonment and death.

And clinging more firmly to the stalactite, Barbara rose on tiptoe and mingled her voice with the joyous cheers of the multitude.

In the act her breath failed, and she felt a sharp pain in her chest, but she heeded the suffering as little as she did the weakness of her limbs.  The physical part of her being seemed asleep or dead.  Nothing was awake or living except her soul.  Nothing stirred within her breast save the rapture of seeing him again, the indescribable pleasure of showing that she loved him.

Already she could no longer see his face, already the dust had concealed him and his charger from her eyes, yet still, filled with peerless happiness, she shouted “Charles!” and again and again “Charles!” It seemed to her as though the air or some good spirit insist bear the cry to him and assure him of her ardent, inextinguishable love.

The charming royal brides, radiant in their jewels, their betrothed husbands, and the lords and ladies of their magnificent train passed Barbara like shadows.  The procession of German, Spanish, Hungarian, Bohemian, and Italian dignitaries swam in a confused medley before her eyes.  The glittering armour of the princes, counts, and barons, the gems on the heads, the robes, and the horses’ trappings of the ladies and the Magyar magnates flashed brightly before her, the red hats and robes of the cardinals gleamed out, but usually everything that her eyes beheld mingled in a single motley, shining, moving, many-limbed body.

The end of the procession was now approaching, and physical weakness suddenly asserted itself most painfully.