German fiction -- Translations into English; Holy Roman Empire -- History -- Charles V, 1519-1556 -- Fiction
Closing the sedan chair as he spoke, he rode on before her.
Meanwhile contradictory emotions were seething and surging in Barbara's
breast.
Where were they taking her?
Did the Emperor intend to make her a prisoner? He certainly possessed
the power. Who would dare to resist him?
She could attain no clearness of thought, for, while giving free course
to the indignation of her soul, she was gazing out at the open sides of
the sedan chair.
Every house, every paving stone here was familiar and awakened some
memory. A crowd of people surrounded her, and among them appeared many a
foreign soldier on foot and on horseback, who would have been well worthy
of an attentive glance. But what did she care for the Italians in
helmets and coats of mail who filled the Altstadt--the main business
street of Landshut--through which she was being carried? She doubtless
cast a glance toward the Town Hall, where her uncle was now devising
means to provide shelter for this legion of soldiers and steeds,
doubtless put her head a little out of the window as she approached the
houses and arcades in the lower stories, and the Lorberer mansion, with
the blunt gable, where she had spent such happy days, appeared. But she
quickly drew it back again; if any of her relatives should see her, what
answer could she make to questions?
But no one perceived her, and who knows whether they would not have
supposed the delicate, troubled face, short locks of hair, and
unnaturally large eyes to be those of another girl who only resembled
the blooming, healthful Barbara of former days?
She also glanced toward the richly decorated portal of St. Martin's
Church, standing diagonally opposite to the sedan chair, and tried to
look up to the steeple, which was higher than almost any other in the
world.
Even in Ratisbon there was not a handsomer, wider street than this
Altstadt, with its stately gable-roofed houses, and certainly not in
Munich, where her uncle had once taken her, and the Bavarian dukes now
resided.
But where, in Heaven's name, would she be borne?
The sedan chair was now swaying past the place where the "short cut" for
pedestrians led up to the Trausnitzburg, the proud citadel of the dukes
of Bavarian Landshut. She leaned forward again to look up at it as it
towered far above her head on the opposite side of the way; the powerful
ruler whose captive she was probably lodged there.
But now!
What did this mean?
The sedan chair was set down, and it was just at the place where the road
at her left, leading to the citadel, climbed the height where rose the
proud Trausnitz fortress.
Perhaps she might now find an opportunity to escape.
Barbara hastily opened the door, but one of her attendants closed it
again, and in doing so pressed her gently back into the chair. At the
same time he shook his head, and, while his little black eyes twinkled
slyly at her, his broad, smiling mouth, over which hung a long black
mustache, uttered a good-natured "No, no."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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