“Where is he from, and what is his name?” Wolf eagerly interrupted.

“Damian Feys,” replied the captain, “and he is a native of Ghent in the Netherlands.  Although he is in the pay of the city, he has remained—­he told me so himself—­a good Catholic.  There was nothing to be feared for the child on the score of religion.  The anxieties which are troubling me on her account come from another source.”

Then, with a mischievous mirthfulness usually foreign to his nature, Wolf raised his goblet, exclaiming: 

“Cast them upon me, Father Blomberg!  I will gladly help you bear them as your loyal son-in-law.”

“So that’s the way of it,” was the captain’s answer, his honest eyes betraying more surprise than pleasure.

Yet he pledged Wolf, and, touching his glass to his, said: 

“I’ve often thought that this might happen if you should see how she has grown up.  If she consents, nothing could please me better; but how many lovers she has already encouraged, and then, before matters became serious, dismissed!  I have experienced it.  If you succeed in putting an end to such trifling, may this hour be blessed!  But do you know the huge maggots she keeps under her golden hair?”

“Both large and small ones,” cried Wolf, with glowing cheeks.  “Truthful as she is, she did not conceal from the playmate of her youth a single impulse of her ambitious soul.”

“And did she give you hope?” asked the captain, thrusting his head eagerly forward.

“Yes,” replied the youth firmly; but he quickly corrected himself, and, in a less confident tone, added, “That is, if I could offer her a care-free life.”

“There it is,” sighed the old man.  “She knows what she wants, and holds firmly to it.  You are the son of a knight, and on account of the music which you can pursue together—­With her everything is possible and little is impossible.  In any case, you will have no easy life with her, and, ere you order the wedding ring——­” Here he suddenly stopped, for a bird-song, high, clear, and yet as insinuatingly sweet as though, on this evening in late April, the merriest and most skilful feathered songsters which had recently found their way home to the fresh green leafage on the shore of the Danube had made an appointment on the steps of the gloomy house in Red Cock Street, rose nearer and nearer to the two men who were sitting over their wine.

It was difficult to believe that this whistling and chirping, trilling and cuckoo calling, came from the same throat; but when the bird notes ceased just outside the door, and Barbara, with bright mirthfulness and the airiest grace, sang the refrain of the Chant des Oiseaux, ’Car la saison est bonne’, bowing gracefully meanwhile, the old enemy of the Turks fairly beamed with delight.

His eyes, wet with tears of grateful joy, sought the young man’s, and, though he had just warned him plainly enough against courting his daughter, his sparkling gaze now asked whether he had ever met an equally bewitching marvel.