comes to the final decision, let me put this one more question: Do you
believe, really and firmly, that if the confidence of the States-General
permits you to take your army by sea, and you lead it in England and
succeed in winning the crown and hand of this--whether she is guilty or
not--beautiful, devout, and, whatever errors she has committed, desirable
Queen, that the troubles which it is so hard for your ambitious soul to
bear will then vanish?  When you have won the woman for whom you yearn,
the throne, and the sceptre, will your sore heart be healed and happiness
make its joyous entry, and also remain in your soul, that is so hard to
satisfy?  For--I see and feel it--it is carried away by the 'More,
farther,' of your father.  Can you, my John, have you really the firm
conviction that, if this lofty desire is fulfilled, you will be content
and believe that you have found the summit and the limit of your feverish
struggle upward and forward?"

"Yes, and again yes," cried Don John in a tone of immovably firm belief,
while his large eyes beamed upon his mother with an expression of full
and genuine trust.  "The vainglory which your first sacrifice brought me
was the source of this life full of bitter disappointment.  The hand of
Mary Stuart, the lovely martyr, the woman so lavishly endowed with every
mental and physical gift, for whom my heart has yearned ever since I saw
her picture, and the crown of England, the symbol of genuine majesty,
will transform disappointment into the fulfilment which Heaven has
hitherto denied me.  If these both fall to the lot of the son, the
mother's sacrifice will not have been in vain; no, it will bring him
golden fruit, for the success of this enterprise will bestow upon your
John, besides the fleeting radiance, the sun whence the light emanates.
It will raise him to the height to which he aspires, and for which Fate
destined him."

Here he hesitated, for the agitated face of Escovedo, who entered with a
despatch in his hand, showed that something unexpected and startling had
occurred.

The secretary, Don John's friend and counsellor, did not allow himself to
be intimidated by the angry gesture with which his master waved him back,
but handed him the paper, exclaiming in a tone ringing with the horror
the news had inspired: "Antwerp attacked by his Majesty's rebellious
troops, those in Alst, headed by their Eletto--burned to ashes,
plundered, destroyed!"

With a hasty snatch Don John seized the parchment announcing the
misfortune, and read it, panting for breath.

The Council of Antwerp had addressed it to King Philip, and sent a copy
to him, the newly appointed governor.

When he let the hand which held the paper fall, he was deadly pale,
and gazed around him as though seeking assistance.

Then his eyes met those of his mother who, seized with anxious fears,
was watching his every movement, and he handed her the fatal sheet,
with the half-sorrowful, half-disdainful exclamation:

"And I am to lead this abused people back to love the man who sent them
the Duke of Alba, that he might heal their wounds with his pitiless iron
hand, and who let the poor, brave fellows in his service starve and go in
rags until, in fierce despair, they seized for themselves what their
employer denied."

The sheet Barbara's son had handed to her trembled in her hand as she
read half aloud: "It is the greatest commercial city in Europe, the
fosterer of art, knowledge, manufactures, and the Catholic faith, which
never wavered in obedience to the King, hurled in a single day from the
height of honour and happiness to a gulf of misery, and become a den of
robbers and murderers, who know nothing of God and the King.  Old men,
women, and children have been slaughtered by them without distinction,
the goods belonging partly to foreign owners have been stolen and burned,
and the magnificent Town Hall, with all its treasures of documents and
patents, has become a prey of the flames."

"Horrible! horrible!" cried Barbara, and Don John repeated her words,
and added in a hollow tone: "And this happened yesterday, on the
selfsame Sunday which saw me ride into the Netherlands!  These are the
bonfires which redden the heavens on my arrival!"

"William of Orange will call them incendiary flames crying aloud for
vengeance," fell in half-stifled accents from Barbara's lips.

"And this time with some reason," replied Don John in a tone of assent,
"for the men who kindled them are mercenaries of the King, formerly our
own troops, who have been driven to desperation."  Then he continued
passionately: "And Philip sends me--me, a man of the sword--to these
provinces.  What is the warrior to do here?  This blade is too good to
deal the death-blow to the body which is already bleeding from a thousand
wounds.  If, nevertheless, I did it, I should destroy the most productive
fountain of the King's wealth.  It is not a man who can fight and command
an army and a navy that is needed here, but a woman who understands how
to mediate and to heal.  The King sent me to this country not to gather
fresh laurels, but to be shipwrecked, and with bleeding brow return
defeated.  Oh, I see through him!  But I also know--Heaven be praised!--
what I owe to myself, my father's son.  If the States-General permit me
to take the troops away by sea, I will gain the woman and the crown that
are beckoning to me in another country, and his Majesty may send a more
pliant regent of either sex to the provinces to continue the battle with
William of Orange, who fights with weapons which my straightforward
nature and firm sword ill understand how to meet.  This sheet places the
decision before me.  Real, genuine glory, the fairest of wives, and a
proud crown--or defeat and ruin."

The close of this outpouring of the young hero's heart sounded like a
manly, irrevocable resolution; but his mother laid her hand upon his arm,
and said quietly, "I will go."

A sunny glance of gratitude from her son rested upon her; she, however,
only bent her head slightly and went on as calmly as if she had found the
strength to be content, but with warm affection:

"My first sacrifice was vain.  May the second not only aid you to gain
the splendour of a crown, but, above all, instil into your soul the
satisfaction with that longed-for highest happiness which your mother's
heart desires for you!"

Then Don John obeyed the mighty impulse of his soul to pour forth to his
mother the gratitude and love which her unselfish retirement wrung from
him.  His arms clasped her closely and tenderly, and never had he
rewarded even his foster-mother in Villagarcia for her love and
faithfulness with a more affectionate kiss.

"My gratitude will die only with myself," he cried as he released her.
"Blessed be the day on which I found my own mother!  It led you, dear
lady, not only to your John, but to his love."

Escovedo, moved to the depths of his heart, had listened in surprise to
this outburst of feeling from the famous son of the Emperor, whom he
loved, to whom he had devoted his fine intellect and wealth of
experience, and for whom it was appointed that he should die.

Thus ended Don John's meeting with his mother, which he had dreaded as an
inevitable evil.  Alba, who described her as an extremely obstinate
woman, had advised him to use a stratagem to induce her to yield to his
wish and leave the Netherlands.  He was to represent that his sister, the
Duchess Margaret, who was holding her court at Aquila, in the Abruzzi
Mountains, invited her to visit her in order to make her acquaintance.
She would not resist this summons, for she had often made her way to the
government building, and took special pleasure in the society of the
aristocratic Spaniards.  When she was once on board a ship, she would be
obliged to submit to being carried to Spain, whence her return could
easily be prevented.

To set such a snare for this woman had been impossible for Don John.
Truth and love had sufficed to induce her to fulfil his wish.

Senor Escovedo had witnessed much that was noble during this hour, but
especially a mother whom in the future he could remember with gratitude
and joy; for Don John's confidant knew that of all he saw and heard here
not a word was false and feigned, yet he knew better than any other man
his master's heart and every look.  Barbara, too, believed her son no
less confidently, and as the shout of victory reaches combatants lying on
the ground, wounded by lances and arrows, the cry of a secret voice
within her soul, sorely as she was stricken, great as was the sacrifice
and suffering which she had imposed upon herself, called upon her to
rejoice in the highest of all gifts--the love of her child, to whom
hitherto she had been only a dreaded stranger.

She could not yet obtain a clear insight into the result of the promise
which she had given her son; it seemed as though a veil was drawn over
her active mind.

Yet again and again she asked herself what power could have induced her
to grant so quickly and unconditionally to the son a demand which in her
youth she would have refused, with defiant opposition, even to his
ardently loved father.  But she took as little trouble to find the
answer as she felt regret for her compliance.

The world to which she returned after this hour had gained a new aspect.
She had not understood the real nature of the former one.  The
exclamation which her son's confession had elicited she still believed
after long reflection.  What she had deemed great, was small; what had
seemed to her light and brilliant, was dark.  What she had considered
worthy of the greatest sacrifice was petty and trivial; no fountain of
joy, but a fierce torrent of new wishes constantly surpassing one
another.  With their boundless extent they had of necessity remained
unfulfilled.  Thus woe on woe, and at the same time the painfully
paralyzing feeling of the hostility of Fate had been evoked from its
surges and, instead of happiness, they had brought sorrow and suffering.

Pride in such a son had been the delight of her life; henceforth, she
felt it, she must seek her happiness, her joys, elsewhere, and she knew
also where, and realized that she was receiving higher for smaller
things.  Instead of sharing his renown, she had gained the right to
share his misfortune and his griefs.

The more and the more eagerly she pondered in silence, the more surely
she perceived that earthly glory and magnificence, which she had thought
the greatest blessings, were only a series of sunbeams, swiftly following
one another, which would be clouded by one shadow after the other until
darkness and oblivion ingulfed them.

Like every outward splendour, fame dazzles the eyes of men.  It would
dim her son's--she knew it now--whether he looked backward to the past or
forward to the future.  The greatness he had gained he overlooked; what
awaited him in the future, having lost his clearness of vision and
impartiality, he was disposed to overvalue.

From her eyes, on the contrary, this knowledge removed veil after veil.

It was a vain delusion which led him to the belief that the Scottish
and English crowns possessed the power to render him happy, and end his
struggle for new and higher honours; for royalty also belonged to the
glory whose worthlessness she now perceived as plainly as the reflection
of her own face in the surface of the mirror.

Barbara saw her son for only a few more fleeting hours; the "Spanish
fury" which destroyed the flower of Antwerp doubled his business cares,
forbade any delay, and imperiously claimed his whole time and strength.

The mother watched his honest labours sorrowfully.  She knew that the
chivalrous champion of the faith, the sincere enthusiast, to whom nothing
was higher than honour and the stainless purity of his name, must succumb
to his most eminent foe, the Prince of Orange, with his tireless,
inventive, thoroughly statesmanlike intellect, which preserved the power
of seeing in the darkness, and did not shrink from deceit where it would
promote the great cause which she did not understand, but to which he
consecrated every drop of his heart's blood, every penny of his property.

Her son came to the country as a Spaniard and the brother of the hated
Philip on the day of the most abominable crime history ever narrated,
and which his followers committed; and who stood higher in the hearts
of the people of the Netherlands than their beloved helper in need,
their "Father William"?

She saw her son go to this hopeless conflict like a garlanded victim to
the altar.  She had nothing to aid him save her prayers and the execution
of the heavy sacrifice which she had resolved to make.  The collapse of
her belief, wishes, and expectations produced a transformation of her
whole nature.  A world of ideas had crumbled into fragments before and
within her, and from their ruins a new one suddenly sprang up in her
strong soul.  Where yesterday her warlike temper had defied or resisted,
to-day she retired with lowered weapons.  To contend against her son, and
force her new knowledge upon him, would have seemed to her foolish and
fruitless, for she desired and expected nothing more from him than that
he should keep for her the love she had won.

So she yielded to his desire without resistance.  However his destiny
might turn, he should be obliged to admit that his mother had omitted
nothing in her power to open to him the path which, according to his own
opinion, might lead to the height for which he longed.

She made use of his affectionate readiness to serve her only so far as to
beg him to take charge of her son Conrad.  He did so willingly, and
endeavoured to induce the young man to enter the priesthood.  He wished
to spare him the disappointments which had marred his own life, but
Conrad preferred the army.

His mother did not forget him, and did everything in her power for him.
He remained on terms of affectionate union with her, but he did not see
her again until the gold of her hair was changed to silver, and he
himself had risen to the rank of colonel.

This was to happen in Spain.  Barbara had gone there by way of Genoa
under the escort of Count Faconvergue, commander of the German
mercenaries, and while doing so had been treated with the respect and
distinguished consideration which was her due as the mother of Don John
of Austria, who had now acknowledged her.

Like every other wish of her son, Barbara had fulfilled with quiet
indulgence his desire that she would not again enter the Netherlands
and Ghent.

From Luxemburg she directed what should be done with her house, her
servants, and the recipients of her alms.  Hannibal Melas relieved her
of the care of Maestro Feys, which she had undertaken, and under his
faithful nursing the old musician was granted many more years of life.
The Maltese also distributed among her poor the large sums which the sale
of Barbara's property produced.

In Spain she was received with the utmost consideration by the Marquis de
la Mota, Dona Magdalena de Ulloa's brother, and later by the lady
herself.  But at first there was no real bond of affection between these
women, and this was Barbara's fault, for Dona Magdalena's experience was
the same as Don John's.  She perceived with shame how greatly she had
undervalued Don John's mother--nay, how much she had wronged her--but her
sedulous efforts to make amends for the error produced an effect upon
Barbara different from her expectations; for the great lady's manner
seemed like a confession of guilt, and kept alive the memory of the
anguish of soul which Dona Magdalena had so often inflicted upon her.

The early death of the young hero whom both loved so tenderly first drew
them together.  Barbara had witnessed with very different feelings from
Dona Magdalena and her brother how the former regarded every false step
of Don John, and especially that of his expedition to England, as a heavy
misfortune, and as such bewailed it.  Dona Magdalena had been firmly
convinced that the spell of fame which surrounded the victor of Lepanto,
and the irresistible lovableness characteristic of his whole nature,
would finally win the hearts of the Netherlanders, and even induce the
Prince of Orange, whose friendship Don John himself hoped to gain, to
join hands with him in the attempt to work for the welfare of his
country.

Barbara knew that this expectation deceived him.

Toleration and liberty were the blessings which the Prince of Orange
desired to win for his people, and both were hateful to her son, reared
at the Spanish court, as she herself saw in them an encroachment upon the
just demands of the Church and the claims of royalty.  Fire and water
could harmonize more easily than these two men, and Barbara foresaw which
of them in this conflict would be the extinguishing flood.

She perceived how waterfall after waterfall was quenching the flames
which burned in Don John's honest soul for the supposed welfare of the
nation intrusted to him.  He was reaping hatred, scorn, and humiliation
wherever he had hoped to win love and gratitude in the Netherlands.  His
royal brother left him in the lurch where he was entitled to depend upon
his assistance.  But when Philip let the mask fall and showed openly how
deeply he distrusted the glorious son of his dead father, and to what a
degree his ill will had risen--when he committed the cruel crime of
having Escovedo, the devoted, loyal friend and counsellor of the victor
of Lepanto, assassinated in Madrid, where he had come to labour in his
master's cause--the most ambitious and sensitive of hearts received the
deathblow which was to put an end to his famous career and his young
life.

Scarcely two years after Barbara's meeting with Don John, the Emperor
Charles's hero son died.  Even in the Netherlands he had remained to the
last victor on the battlefield.  Alessandro Farnese, his dearest friend,
his companion in youth, in study, and in war, had valiantly supported him
with his good sword; but his faithful friendship had been unable to heal
the sufferings which wore out Don John's strong body and brave soul when,
to the severest political failures, was added the bloody treachery of his
royal brother.

The death of this son doubtless first taught Barbara with what cruel
anguish a mother's heart can be visited; but her John had not really died
to her.  Accustomed to love him from a distance, she continued to live in
and with him, and in her thoughts and dreams he remained her own.

At first, without leaving the lay condition, she had joined the Dominican
Sisters in the Convent of Santa Maria la Real at Cebrian; but even the
slight constraint which life behind stone walls imposed upon her still
seemed unendurable, so she retired to the little city of Colindres, in
the district of Loredo.  There stood the deserted house of Escovedo, the
murdered friend and counsellor of her John and, as everything under its
roof reminded her of the beloved dead, it seemed the most fitting spot in
which to pass the remnant of her days.  In it she led an independent but
quiet, secluded life.  She spent only a few maravedis for her own wants,
while she used the thousands of ducats which, after her son's death, King
Philip awarded her as an annual income, to make life easier for the poor
and the sick whom she affectionately sought out.

With every tear she dried she believed that she was showing the best
honour to her son's memory.

She was denied the pleasure of placing a flower upon his grave, for King
Philip had done his dead brother the honour which he withheld from him
during life and, though only as a corpse, received him among the members
of his illustrious race.  His coffin had been entombed in the cold family
vault of the Escurial, where no sunbeam enters.

But Barbara needed no place associated with his person in order to
remember him; she always felt near him, and memories were the vital air
which nourished her soul.  Music remained the best ornament of her
solitary existence, and never did the forms of the son and the father
come nearer to her than when she sang the songs--or in after years played
them on the harp and lute--to which her imperial lover had liked to
listen.

The memory of her John's father now taught her to change the "More,
farther," of his motto into the maxim, "Learn to be content," the memory
of the son, that every sacrifice which we make for the happiness of
another is futile if, besides splendour and glory, fame and honour, it
does not also gain the spiritual blessings whose possession first lends
those gifts genuine value.  These much-envied favours of Fortune had
little to do with the indestructible monument which she erected in her
heart to her son and her lover.  What built it and lent it eternal
endurance were the modest gifts of the heart.

She now knew the names of the blessings which might have guided her boy
to a loftier happiness and, full of the love which even death could not
assail and lessen, mourned by many, Barbara Blomberg, at an advanced age,
closed her eyes upon the world.




ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

The greatness he had gained he overlooked
Who does not struggle ward, falls back






ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE "BARBARA BLOMBERG":

A live dog is better than a dead king
Always more good things in a poor family which was once rich
Attain a lofty height from which to look down upon others
Before learning to obey, he was permitted to command
Catholic, but his stomach desired to be Protestant (Erasmus)
Dread which the ancients had of the envy of the gods
Grief is grief, and this new sorrow does not change the old one
Harder it is to win a thing the higher its value becomes
No happiness will thrive on bread and water
Shuns the downward glance of compassion
That tears were the best portion of all human life
The blessing of those who are more than they seem
The greatness he had gained he overlooked
To the child death is only slumber
Who does not struggle ward, falls back
Whoever will not hear, must feel