Barbara Blomberg (Historical Novel). Georg Ebers
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Название: Barbara Blomberg (Historical Novel)
Автор: Georg Ebers
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 4064066381202
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“God grant it!” replied the Emperor dully, and then, with a shrug of the shoulders, added: “Besides, I can not imagine whence such joy should come to me. A boy’s bell-like voice sang to me yesterday, ‘Quia amore langueo.’ This heart, too, longs for love, but it will never find it on earth.”
“Why not, if your Majesty sends forth to seek it?” replied the confessor eagerly. “The Gospel itself gives a guarantee of success. ‘Seek, and ye shall find,’ it promises. To the heart which longs for love the all-bountiful Father sends that for which it longs to meet it halfway.”
“When it is young,” added the Emperor, shrugging his shoulders impatiently. “But when the soul’s power of flight has failed, who will bestow the ability to traverse the half of the way allotted to it?”
“The omnipotence which works greater miracles,” replied the priest in a tone of the most ardent conviction, pointing upward.
Charles nodded a mournful assent, and, after a sign which indicated to the confessor that he desired the interview to end, he continued his painful walk.
He had waved aside the litter which the lord chamberlain, Count Heinrich of Nassau, had placed ready for him, and limped, amid severe suffering, to his room.
There the Bishop of Arras awaited him with arduous work, and the Emperor did not allow himself a moment’s rest while his sister was using the beautiful first of May to ride and hunt. Charles missed her, and still more the faithful man who had served him as a page, and whom he had been accustomed since to have in close attendance upon him.
To gratify his sister’s passion for the chase he had given Quijada leave of absence, and now he regretted it. True, he told no one that he missed Don Luis, but those who surrounded him were made to feel his ill-humour plainly enough. Only he admitted to the Bishop of Arras that the radiant light which was shining into his window was disagreeable. It made too strong a contrast to his gloomy soul, and it even seemed as though the course of the sun, in its beaming, unattainably lofty path, mocked the hapless, painful obstruction to his own motion.
At noon he enjoyed very little of the meal, prepared for a fast day, which the new cook had made tempting enough.
In reply to the Count of Nassau’s inquiry whether he wished to hear any music, he had answered rudely that the musicians and the boy choir could play and sing in the chapel for aught he cared. Whether he would listen to the performance was doubtful.
Single tones had reached his ears, but he did not feel in the mood to descend the stairs.
He went to rest earlier than usual. The next morning, after mass, he himself asked for Josquin’s “Ecce tu pulchra es.” It was to be sung during the noonday meal. But when, instead of the Queen and Quijada, a little note came from his sister, requesting, in a jesting tone, an extension of the leave of absence because she trusted to the healing power of the sun and the medicine “music” upon her distinguished brother, and the chase bound her by a really magic spell to the green May woods, he flung the sheet indignantly away, and, just before the beginning of the meal, ordered the singing to be omitted.
Either in consequence of the fasting or the warm sunshine, the pangs of the gout began to lessen; but, nevertheless, his mood grew still more melancholy, for he had believed in the sincere affection of two human beings, and Queen Mary left him alone in his misery, while his faithful Luis, to please the female Nimrod, did the same.
CHAPTER XII.
During the singing in the chapel on the fast day Barbara had waited vainly for a word of appreciation from the Emperor. The Queen of Hungary had gone to the chase, and the monarch had remained in his apartments, while she had done her best below. A few lords and ladies of the court, several priests, knights, and pages had been the only listeners.
This had sorely irritated her easily wounded sensitiveness, but she had appeared at the rehearsal in the New Scales on the following morning. Again she reaped lavish praise, but several times she met Appenzelder’s well-founded criticisms with opposition.
The radiant cheerfulness which, the day before yesterday, had invested her nature with an irresistible charm had vanished.
When the tablatures were at last laid aside, and the invitation to sing in the Golden Cross did not yet arrive, her features and her whole manner became so sullen that even some of the choir boys noticed it.
Since the day before a profound anxiety had filled her whole soul, and she herself wondered that it had been possible for her to conquer it just now during the singing.
How totally different an effect she had expected her voice—which even the greatest connoisseurs deemed worthy of admiration—to produce upon the music-loving Emperor!
What did she care if the evening of the day before yesterday the Queen of Hungary had paid her fine compliments and assured her of the high approval of her imperial brother, since Appenzelder had informed her yesterday that it was necessary to conceal from his Majesty the fact that a woman was occupying the place of the lad from Cologne, Johannes. The awkward giant had been unfriendly to women ever since, many years before, his young wife had abandoned him for a Neapolitan officer, and his bad opinion of the fairer sex had been by no means lessened when Barbara, at this communication, showed with pitiless frankness the anger and mortification which it aroused in her mind. A foul fiend, he assured Gombert, was hidden in that golden-haired delight of the eyes with the siren voice; but the leader of the orchestra had interceded for her, and thought that her complaint was just. So great an artist was too good to fill the place of substitute for a sick boy who sang for low wages. She had obliged him merely to win the applause of the Emperor and his illustrious sister, and to have the regent turn her back upon Ratisbon just at this time, and without having informed his Majesty whose voice had with reason aroused his delight, would be felt even by a gentler woman as an injury.
Appenzelder could not help admitting this, and then dejectedly promised Barbara to make amends as soon as possible for the wrong which the regent, much against his will, had committed.
He was compelled to use all the power of persuasion at his command to keep her in the boy choir, at least until the poisoned members could be employed again, for she threatened seriously to withdraw her aid in future.
Wolf, too, had a difficult position with the girl whom his persuasion had induced to enter the choir. What Appenzelder ascribed to the devil himself, he attributed merely to the fervour of her fiery artist temperament. Yet her vehement outburst of wrath had startled him also, and a doubt arose in his mind as to what matrimonial life might be with a companion who, in spite of her youth, ventured to oppose elderly, dignified men so irritably and sharply. But at the very next song which had greeted him from her rosy lips this scruple was forgotten. With sparkling eyes he assented to Gombert’s protestation that, in her wrath, she had resembled the goddess Nemesis, and looked more beautiful than ever.
In spite of his gray hair, she seemed to have bewitched the great musician, like so many other men, and this only enhanced her value in Wolf’s sight.
Urgently, nay, almost humbly, he at last entreated her to have patience, for, if not at noon, his Majesty would surely desire to hear the boy choir in the evening. Besides, he added, she must consider it a great compliment that his Majesty had summoned the singers to the Glen Cross the evening before at all, for on such days of СКАЧАТЬ