To set such a snare for this woman had been impossible for Don John.  Truth and love had sufficed to induce her to fulfil his wish.

Senor Escovedo had witnessed much that was noble during this hour, but especially a mother whom in the future he could remember with gratitude and joy; for Don John’s confidant knew that of all he saw and heard here not a word was false and feigned, yet he knew better than any 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 knew it now—­whether he looked backward to the past or forward to the future.  The greatness he had gained he overlooked; what awaited him in the future, having lost his clearness of vision and impartiality, he was disposed to overvalue.