Count Lanoi announced that his Highness’s travelling escort was ready, and the Emperor, with an air of paternal affection, bade the younger sovereign farewell.

As soon as the door had closed behind Maurice, Charles, turning to Granvelle, remarked, “The Saxon cousin returned our clasp of the hand some what coldly, but the means of rendering it warmer are ready.”

“The Elector’s hat,” replied the Bishop of Arras.  “I hope it will prevent him from making our heads hot, as the Germans say, instead of his own.”

“If only our brains keep cool,” replied the Emperor.  “It is needful in dealing with this young man.”

“He knows his Machiavelli,” added the statesman, “but I think the Florentine did not write wholly in vain for us also.”

“Scarcely,” observed the Emperor, smiling, and then rang the little bell to have his valet summon Dr. Mathys.

The leech had returned from his visit to Barbara, and feared that the burning fever from which she was suffering might indicate the commencement of inflammation of the lungs.

Charles started up and expressed the desire to be conveyed at once in the litter to Prebrunn; but the physician declared that his Majesty’s visit would as certainly harm the feverish girl as going out in such weather would increase the gout in his royal master’s foot.

The monarch shrugged his shoulders, and seized the despatches and letters which had arrived.  The persons about him suffered severely from his detestable mood, but the dull weather of this gloomy day appeared also to have a bad effect upon the confessor De Soto, for his lofty brow was scarcely less clouded than the sky.  He did not allude to Barbara by a single word, yet she was the cause of his depression.

After his conversation with the sovereign he had retired to his private room, to devote himself to the philological studies which he pursued during the greater portion of the day with equal zeal and success.  But he had scarcely begun to be absorbed in the new copy of the best manuscript of Apuleius, which had readied him from Florence, and make notes in the first Roman printed work of this author, when Cassian interrupted him.

He had missed the servant in the morning.  Now the fellow, always so punctual when he had not gazed too deeply into the wine-cup, stood before him in a singular plight, for he was completely drenched, and a disagreeable odour of liquor exhaled from him.  The flaxen hair, which bristled around his head and hung over his broad, ugly face, gave him so unkempt and imbecile an appearance that it was repulsive to the almoner, and he harshly asked where he had been loitering.

But Cassian, confident that his master’s indignation would soon change to approval and praise, rapidly began to relate what had occurred outside the little castle at Prebrunn when the festival under the lindens was over.