The same fate, nay, one a thousand times worse, awaited this wonderfully lovely patrician child, whose father was to wield the oars in the galleys if no one interceded for the unfortunate man.

What was life!

From the height of happiness it led her directly to such an abyss of the deepest woe.

What contrasts!

A day, an hour had transported her from bitter poverty and torturing yearning to the side of the highest and greatest of monarchs, but who could tell for how long—­how soon the fall into the gulf awaited her?

A shudder ran through her frame, and a deep pity for the sweet creature whose coloured likeness she held in her hand seized upon her.

She probably remembered her lover’s refusal, and that she only needed to allude to it to release herself from the wailing old woman, but an invisible power sealed her lips.  She was filled with an ardent desire to help, to avert this unutterable misery, to bring aid to this child, devoted to destruction.

To rise above everything petty, and with the imperial motto “More, farther,” before her eyes, to attain a lofty height from which to look down upon others and show her own generosity to them, had been the longing of her life.  She was still permitted to feel herself the object of the love of the mightiest sovereign on earth, and should she be denied performing, by her own power, an act of deliverance to which heart and mind urged her?

No, and again no!

She was no longer poor Wawerl!

She could and would show this, for, like an illumination, words which she had heard the day before in the Golden Cross had flashed into her memory.

Master Wenzel Jamnitzer, the famous Nuremberg goldsmith, had addressed them to her in the imperial apartments, where he had listened to her singing the day before.

He had come to consult with the Emperor Charles about the diadems which he wished to give his two nieces, the daughters of Ferdinand, King of the Romans, who were to be married in July in Ratisbon.  Their manufacture had been intrusted to Master Jamnitzer, and after the concert the Nuremberg artist had thanked Barbara for the pleasure which he owed her.  In doing so, he had noticed the Emperor’s first gift, the magnificent star which she wore on her breast at the side of her squarenecked dress.  Examining it with the eye of an expert, he had remarked that the central stone alone was worth an estate.

If she deprived herself of this superb ornament, the despairing old mother would be consoled, and the lovely child saved from hunger and disgrace.

With Barbara, thought, resolve, and action followed one another in rapid succession.

“You shall have what you need to-morrow,” she called to the marquise, kissed—­obeying a hasty impulse—­her little namesake’s picture, rejected any expression of thanks from the astonished old dame, and went to rest.