This unsentimental harangue leads us to “the last knight of Europe”--Don John of Austria, around whose name there still shines a glamour of romance like the sound of a trumpet. About nine years after the death of the Empress Isabel, Charles V went a-wandering, still disconsolate, through his mighty empire. He was sad and lonely, for it was about the time when the arterio-sclerosis which was to kill him began to depress his spirits. At Ratisbon, where he lay preparing for the great campaign which was to end in the glorious victory of Muhlburg, they brought to him to cheer him up a sweet singer and pretty girl named Barbara Blomberg, daughter of a noble family. She sang to the Emperor to such purpose that he became her lover, and in due course Don John was born. By this time Charles had discovered that his pretty nightingale was a petulant, extravagant, sensual young woman, by no means the sort of mother a wise man would select to bring up his son; so he took the boy from her care and sent him to a poor Spanish family near Madrid. Whatever Charles V did in his private life seems to have borne the stamp of wisdom and kindness, however little we may agree with some of his public actions. Probably Barbara did not object; it must have been rather alarming for the flighty young person to have the tremendous personality of the great Emperor constantly overlooking her folly; she married a man named Kugel, ruined him by her extravagance, and died penniless save for an annuity of 200 florins left her by the Emperor in his will. I read a touch of sentimentality into Charles’s character. It is difficult to wonder more at his memory of his old light-of-love in his will, or at his accurate and uncomplimentary estimate of her value. Probably he was rather ashamed of some of his memories; so far as I can find out there were not many such, and he wished to hush up the whole incident. Probably Barbara was not worth much more than 200 florins per annum.