Barbara Blomberg — Complete by Georg Ebers (phonics reading books .TXT) 📕
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- Author: Georg Ebers
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Every one else who was in the street or at the window looked after Barbara, and pointed out to others the beautiful Jungfrau Blomberg and the proud security with which she governed the spirited gray. She had become a good rider, first upon her father’s horses, and then at the Wollers in the country, and took risks which many a bold young noble would not have imitated.
Her aged suitor’s gray Andalusian was dearer than the man himself, whom she regarded merely as a sheet-anchor which could be used if everything else failed.
The thought of what might happen when, after these days of working for her bread ended, still more terrible ones followed, had troubled her again and again the day before. Now she no longer recollected these miserable things. What a proud feeling it was to ride on horseback through the sweet May air, in the green woods, as her own mistress, and bid defiance to the ungrateful sovereign in the Golden Cross!
The frustration of the hope that her singing would make the Emperor desire to hear her again and again had wounded her to the depths of her soul and spoiled her night’s rest. The annoyance of having vainly put forth her best efforts to please him had become unendurable after the fresh refusal which, as it were, set the seal upon her fears, and in the defiant flight to the forest she seemed to have found the right antidote. As she approached the monarch’s residence, she felt glad and proud that he, who could force half the world to obey him, could not rule her.
To attract his notice by another performance would have been the most natural course, but Barbara had placed herself in a singular relation toward the Emperor Charles. To her he was the man, not the Emperor, and that he did not express a desire to hear her again seemed like an insult which the man offered to the woman, the artist, who was ready to obey his sign.
Her perverse spirit had rebelled against such lack of appreciation of her most precious gifts, and filled her with rankling hatred against the first person who had closed his heart to the victorious magic of her voice.
When she refused Appenzelder her aid in case the Emperor Charles desired to hear the choir that evening, and promised Frau Kastenmayr to accompany her to Prufening, she had been like a rebellious child filled with the desire to show the man who cared nothing for her that, against her will, he could not hear even a single note from her lips.
They were to meet the other members of the party at St. Oswald’s Church on the Danube, so they were obliged to pass the Golden Cross.
This suited Barbara and, with triumphant selfconfidence, in which mingled a slight shade of defiance, she looked up to the Emperor’s windows. She did not see him, it is true, but she made him a mute speech which ran: “When, foolish sovereign, who did not even think it worth while to grant me a single look, you hear the singing again to-night, and miss the voice which, I know full well, penetrated your heart, you will learn its value, and long for it as ardently as I desired your summons.”
Here her cheeks glowed so hotly that Frau Kastenmayr noticed it, and with maternal solicitude asked, from her heavy, steady bay horse:
“Is the gray too gay for you, my darling?”
CHAPTER XIII.
Shortly after sunset Appenzelder received the order to have the boy choir sing before the Emperor.
During the noon hour, which the monarch had spent alone, thoughts so sad, bordering upon melancholy, had visited him, although for several hours he had been free from pain, that he relinquished his resentful intention of showing his undutiful sister how little he cared for her surprise and how slight was his desire to enjoy music.
In fact, he, too, regarded it as medicine, and hoped especially for a favourable effect from the exquisite soprano voice in the motet “Tu pulchra es.”
He still had some things to look over with Granvelle, but the orchestra and the boy choir must be ready by ten o’clock.
Would it not have been foolish to bear this intolerable, alarming mood until the midnight meal? It must be dispelled, for he himself perceived how groundless it was. The pain had passed away, the despatches contained no bad news, and Dr. Mathys had permitted him to go out the next day. When Adrian already had his hand on the door knob, he called after him, “And Appenzelder must see that the exquisite new voice—he knows—is heard.”
Soon after, when Granvelle had just left him, the steward, Malfalconnet, entered, and, in spite of the late hour—the Nuremberg clock on the writing table had struck nine some time before—asked an audience for Sir Wolf Hartschwert, one of her Highness the regent’s household, to whom she committed the most noiseless and the most noisy affairs, namely, the secret correspondence and the music.
“The German?” asked Charles, and as the baron, with a low bow, assented, the Emperor continued: “Then it is scarcely an intrigue, at any rate a successful one, unless he is unlike the usual stamp. But no! I noticed the man. There is something visionary about him, like most of the Germans. But I have never seen him intoxicated.”
“Although he is of knightly lineage, and, as I heard, at home in the neighbourhood of the Main, where good wine matures,” remarked Malfalconnet, with another bow. “At this moment he looks more than sober, rather as though some great fright had roused him from a carouse. Poor knight!”
“Ay, poor knight!” the Emperor assented emphatically. “To serve my sister of Hungary in one position may be difficult for a man who is no sportsman, and now in two! God’s death! These torments on earth will shorten his stay in purgatory.”
The Emperor Charles had spoken of his sister in a very different tone the day before, but now she remained away from him and kept with her a friend whom he greatly needed, so he repaid her for it.
Therefore, with a shrug of the shoulders expressive of regret, he added, “However badly off we may be ourselves, there is always some one with whom we would not change places.”
“Were I, the humblest of the humble, lucky enough to be in your Majesty’s skin,” cried the baron gaily, “I wouldn’t either. But since I am only poor Malfalconnet, I know of nobody—and I’m well acquainted with Sir Wolf—who seems to me more enviable than your Majesty.”
“Jest, or earnest?” asked the Emperor.
“Earnest,
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