Now the tumult died away for a few minutes, and Barbara felt as though her heart stood still, for the two stately men on splendid chargers who now, after a considerable interval, followed them, were the royal brothers, the Emperor Charles and King Ferdinand.

The man for whom Barbara’s soul longed, as well as her eyes, rode on the side toward her.

He was still half concealed by dust, but it could be no one else, for now the outburst of enthusiasm, joy, and reverence from the populace reached its climax.  It seemed as though the very trees by the wayside joined in the limitless jubilation.  The greatness of the sovereign, the general, and the happy head of the family, made the Protestants around him forget with what perils this monarch threatened their faith and thereby themselves; and he, too, the defender 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.