Usually she had always been received here with a certain shade of embarrassment, but to-day her coming seemed to please Herr Adrian.  From the great arm-chair, which he now never left, he held out his hand to her, and Frau Traut’s merry eyes looked a glad welcome.

After the first greetings, they eagerly expressed their joyful amazement at the clear tones of her voice.  Then Frau Dubois exchanged a significant glance with her husband, and now Barbara learned that a letter had arrived from San Yuste that very morning, which contained little except pleasant news of his Majesty and John.

While speaking, Adrian drew from his doublet the precious missive, showed it to the young wife as cautiously as a fragile ornament which we are reluctant to let pass out of our hands, and said in an agitated voice: 

“The writer is no less a personage than Dona Magdalena de Ulloa.  May Heaven reward her for it!”

Barbara gazed beseechingly into his wrinkled face, and from the inmost depths of her heart rose the cry:  “Oh, let me see it, for I—­you know it—­I am his mother!”

“So she is,” said the old man in a tone of assent, nodded his long head, whose hair was now snow-white, and glanced questioningly at his wife.  The answer was an assent.

Adrian clasped his chin—­during the period of his service he had always worn it smooth-shaven, but the white stubble of a full beard was now growing on it—­in his emaciated hand, and asked Barbara if she understood Spanish.

Her knowledge of it was very slight; but Frau Traut, who, like her husband, had mastered it during the long years of intercourse with the Castilian court, now undertook to put the contents of the letter into German.

This was not difficult, for she had already been obliged to read it aloud three times to Adrian, who could no longer decipher written characters.

The address was not omitted; it had pleased them both.  It ran as follows: 

“To his Majesty’s good and faithful servant, Adrian Dubois, from his affectionate friend of former days, Dona Magdalena de Ulloa, wife of Don Luis Mendez Quijada, Lady of Villagarcia.”

Frau Trout read these noble names aloud to Barbara proudly, as if they were her own; but before she went on Adrian interrupted—­

“As to friendship, you may think, Frau Barbara, that Dona Magdalena is showing me far too much honour in using those words; but I would still give my right hand for that lovely creature with her kindly soul.  When, just after Don Luis married her, his Majesty took her young husband away, she entreated me most earnestly to look after him, and I could sometimes be of assistance.  To be sure, we broke many a piece of bread together in war and peace in the same service.  Ah, Frau Barbara!  I am far better off here than I deserve to be; but sometimes my heart is ready to break when I think of my Emperor, and that I must leave the care of him to others.”