Five days after the assembling of the Knights of the Golden Fleece, the solemn ceremony of the abdication would take place in the great hall which joined the palace chapel.
She must obtain admittance to it. Her husband did what he could to aid her and soothe her excitement by the gratification of so ardent a wish, but his efforts were vain.
Barbara herself, however, did not remain idle, and tried her fortune with those of high and low estate whom she had known in the past.
She could not trust to forcing her way in on the day of the ceremony of abdication, for every place in the limited space assigned to spectators had been carefully allotted, and no one would be permitted to enter the palace without a pass. When, after many a futile errand, she had been refused also by the lord chamberlain, she turned her steps to Baron Malfalconnet's palace.
He had just swung himself into the saddle, and Barbara found him greatly changed. The handsome major-domo had grown gray, his bright face was wrinkled, and his smiling lips now wore a new, disagreeable, almost cruel expression of mockery. He probably recognised his visitor at once, but the meeting seemed scarcely to afford him pleasure. Nevertheless, he listened to her.
But as soon as he heard what she desired, he straightened himself in the saddle, and cried: "When I wished to present you to his Majesty—do you remember?—at Ratisbon, you hastily wheeled your horse and vanished. Now, when you desire to bid farewell to our sovereign lord, I dutifully follow the example you then set me."
As he spoke he put spurs to his horse and, kissing his hand to her, dashed away. Barbara, wounded and disappointed, gazed after the pitiless scoffer.
She had knocked in vain where she might hope for consideration; only the young man of middle height who, carrying a portfolio under his arm, now approached her and raised his black secretary's cap, had been omitted, though he, too, was one of the old Ratisbon friends, and his position with the Bishop of Arras gave him a certain influence.
It was the little Maltese choir boy, Hannibal Melas, who owed so much to her recommendation.
He asked sympathizingly what troubled her and, after Barbara had confided to him what she had hitherto vainly desired, he referred her unasked to his omnipotent master, who was to enter King Philip's service, and proposed that she should come to his office early the next morning. Thence he would try to take her to the minister, who had by no means forgotten her superb singing. His Eminence had mentioned her kindly very recently in a conversation with the leech.