attend to every day; there were the Fiefs of the Empire to be received. Charles had at last settled affairs with his brother, and although neither was entirely satisfied, they both realized that they had come as near to satisfaction as could be expected.
Reviewing the last years, Charles considered he had good cause for satisfaction. His son Philip was a young man of whom he could be proud. Very soon he would be able to leave the responsibility of government in the hands of that worthy young man. It was folly to have wished for a gayer son. Yet how pleased he would have been to have begotten a son who combined Philip’s excellent qualities with charm, gaiety, and that bold manliness which the Flemings demanded of a leader.
Charles was in this meditative mood, sitting at his palace window, when he saw a beautiful girl below. Her fair thick hair was coiled about her head, and her costume proclaimed her to be a burgher’s daughter.
He watched her, wistfully admiring her youth. He could see the shape of her strong, firm legs and thighs beneath her skirts; her profile was clear-cut, and she walked with a modest unawareness of her beauty.
He wondered about her, and he could not dismiss thoughts of her from his mind. He forgot to put a fresh green leaf into his mouth, and indeed the fever had abated considerably. He had not felt so well for years, and the sight of the blonde girl, and perhaps the thoughts of a perfect son, had made him feel almost a young man again.
He saw the girl again on another occasion and he, keeping watch for her, discovered that she walked past the palace every day. He played with the idea (so beloved of kings) of walking through the streets disguised, of making her acquaintance, and, temporarily setting aside his imperial dignity, wooing her as a nobleman.
But Charles was a realist. He was nearly fifty; the girl could not be any more than twenty. How could an aging man, with cracked lips, with gout and fever, disguise himself as a young lover?
No, he thought; I cannot cast off my imperial dignity, for what else have I to attract a beautiful young girl?
So, being unable to play the old game of masque and disguise, he sent for her.
She came, shy and trembling, and her beauty together with her youth delighted him. She was afraid, he had been told, that she or her father or some member of her family had committed an offense of some kind.
He waved away all his attendants and spoke to her very gently.
“Do not be afraid. You have committed no crime, nor has your father, unless it is a crime to be beautiful or to beget a beautiful daughter. I have watched you passing in the streets, and it gave me great pleasure to know that you were one of my subjects.”
The girl was so frightened that she could not speak.
“Tell me your name,” he said. “Here! Sit on this stool … close to me that I may see you better. Now … what do they call you?”
“Barbara,” she whispered. “Barbara Blomberg.”
“Then I shall call you Barbara, my Flemish maid.”
She did not speak, and he went on: “I thought to come to woo you disguised as a nobleman. Then I realized that I was too old to play such games, so I sent for you as your Emperor, because I knew that there would be little in your sight to distinguish me from others apart from my Imperial crown, my palace, my servants.”
He did not make love to her then. He felt unusually abashed, longing above all things that she should come to him willingly.
The burgher’s young daughter had seen the mighty Emperor on other occasions; she had seen him surrounded by Imperial pomp. She had never in all her life imagined a humble Emperor.
And in a short while Charles—fifty, gouty, fever-racked—found that his wayward interest had grown to love, and he loved this girl with a passion he had never felt before, even in his youth. As for Barbara Blomberg, she was at first moved by the imperial humility, and eventually her feelings changed to love of him.
The Emperor, feeling young again, was eagerly devouring the fruit of passion’s burgeoning. He was happy during those days in Augsburg when Barbara Blomberg became his mistress; and before Philip left for Spain it was beyond doubt that she was to have a child.
The Emperor was delighted. He believed that his child would be a son and that he would combine the staid virtues of Philip with the beauty of his mother.
Those were charmed days for the Emperor; and meanwhile Philip made his way back to Spain.
The German Princes rose in sudden and unexpected revolt, joining with Henri of France against Charles. The cunning French King persuaded the Italians to turn against the Emperor and, being confronted with war on two fronts and finding he had not the means at his disposal to meet it, Charles saw nothing but disaster and defeat ahead.
He ceased to dally with his beloved mistress; he put himself at the head of his armies, but he was too late, too tired, too old. Defeat followed swiftly, and with it the peace which was dictated by Saxony. The French seized their opportunities and the Duke of Guise decimated Charles’s armies at Metz.
He was beaten and he knew it. He did not see how he could ever regain what he had lost, so heavy was his defeat, so humiliating the peace terms to which he was forced to agree.
With great agony of mind, he knew that he had lost a great deal of what he had hoped Philip would inherit, and it seemed now that his son would be Philip of Spain in very truth.
Was it because he was old that all the fight was going out of him?
He tried to raise money, but the Spaniards were only too glad to see his dominions slipping away from him. They wanted their King to be King of Spain, to stay with his people, to develop Spain from within. Charles could see little security in what was left of his Empire; he could only see a future given over to continual wars.
Often he thought of days and nights spent in Augsburg, of the child who was to be all that he had longed for in
