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The marionnettes made a very dismal entertainment. They performed a piece, called Pyramus and Thisbe, in five mortal acts, and all written in Alexandrines fully as long as the performers. One marionnette was the king; another the wicked counsellor; a third, credited with exceptional beauty, represented Thisbe; and then there were guards, and obdurate fathers, and walking gentlemen.
Nor would he give her up as lost, and his travelling companion. Pyramus, who was like a son to him, was ready to aid him, for his love was so true and steadfast that he still wished to make her his wife, and offered through him to share everything with her, even his honourable name.
At the first glance Pyramus saw that something unusual had happened; but she gave him no time to question her, only glanced around to see if they were alone, and then cried, as if frantic: "I will bear it no longer. You must know it too. But it is a great secret." Then she made him swear that he, too, would keep it strictly, and in great anxiety he obeyed.
The following year Barbara went to Ems again, this time no longer in mourning robes, but scarcely less magnificently attired than many a Rhenish noble's wife, who was also seeking health and amusement there. The property she had inherited, and which the conscientious Pyramus would not touch, and Frau Lamperi's skilful fingers had accomplished this.
Should she reject what the most powerful and wealthy sovereign in the world offered with contemptible parsimony? No! It was not much, but it would suffice for her support, and the additional gift was large enough to afford her father a great pleasure when he came home. Pyramus Kogel's last letter reported that his condition was improving. Perhaps he might soon return.
Surely he had not seen her for the last time, and perhaps Fate would now help him to perform the vow that he had made before her door in the dark entry of the house in Ratisbon. While Sir Pyramus was leaving her Barbara had heard a man's voice in Frau Traut's room, but she scarcely noticed it. What she had learned weighed heavily upon her soul.
She heard the sound of a footfall and turned to behold not Pyramus, but a creature unwelcome to any tryst none other than a lioness crouching to drink from the pool hard by. Without a cry, Thisbe fled, dropping her veil as she ran. She found a hiding-place among the rocks at some distance, and there she waited, not knowing what else to do.
The dawn which waked her seemed like a deliverance, and directly after mass she hurried out of the gate and into the open country. On her return she found a letter from her father. Pyramus Kogel was its bearer, and he had left the message that he would return the next day. This time her father had written with his own hand.
When, a few days later, she learned that the Emperor had set out for Landshut, she entreated Wolf to seek out Pyramus Kogel, for she had just learned that during her illness her father's travelling companion had asked to see her, but, like every one else, had been refused.
All the women of the upper classes wore mourning, and with double reason; for, soon after the news of the Emperor's death reached Brussels, King Philip's second wife, Mary Tudor, of England, also died. Therefore no one noticed that Barbara wore widow's weeds, and she was glad that she could do so without wounding Pyramus.
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