Accustomed to give herself up entirely to the gifts which the present offered, she had turned her back on Ratisbon and its inhabitants, with whom, during this period of happiness she could easily dispense, as if they were a forgotten world. There was no one in her native city whom she seriously missed or to whom she was strongly drawn. That she, too, offered these people little, and was of small importance, self-love had never permitted her to realize, and therefore she felt an emotion of painful surprise when she perceived the deep gulf which separated her from her fellow-citizens of both sexes.
Now her old friends and acquaintances showed her plainly enough how little they cared for her withdrawal.
Pretty Elspet Zohrer, with whom she had contended for the recruiting officer, Pyramus Kogel, was standing opposite to her, by her partner's side, in the same row with charming little Mietz Schiltl, Anne Mirl Woller, her cousin, Marg Thun, and the others.
The Zauner, which they were dancing with a solemn dignity that aroused the baron's mirth, afforded them an opportunity to look around them, and they eagerly availed themselves of it; nay, they almost all glanced at Barbara, and then, with evident intention, away from her, after Elspet Zohrer, with a contemptuous elevation of her dainty little snub nose, had ignored her schoolmate's greeting.
Barbara drew herself up, and the air of unapproachable dignity which she assumed well suited the aristocratic gentleman at her side, whom every one knew as the most brilliant, witty, and extravagant noble at the Emperor's court. At the same time she addressed the baron, whom she had hitherto kept at a distance, with unconstrained familiarity, and as the eyes of the mothers also rested upon her, remarks which might have driven the blood to her cheeks were made upon the intimate terms existing between the "Emperor's sweetheart" and the profligate and spendthrift Malfalconnet.
True, Barbara could not understand what they were saying, but it was easy enough to perceive in what way they were talking about her.
Yet what gave these women the right to condemn her?
They bore her a grudge because she had distinguished herself by her art, while their little geese were idle at home or, at most, busied themselves in the kitchen, at the spinning wheel, in dancing, and whatever was connected with it while waiting for their future husbands. The favour which the most illustrious of mortals showed her they imputed to her as a crime.
How could they know that she was more to the Emperor than the artist whose singing enraptured him?
The girls yonder—her Woller cousins certainly—merely held aloof because their mothers commanded them to do it. Only in the case of a few need she fear that jealousy and envy had taken possession of them. Yet what did she care for them and their behaviour? She looked over their heads with the air of a queen.