Their manufacture had been intrusted to Master Jamnitzer, and after the concert the Nuremberg artist had thanked Barbara for the pleasure which he owed her.

In doing so, he had noticed the Emperor's first gift, the magnificent star which she wore on her breast at the side of her squarenecked dress.

Examining it with the eye of an expert, he had remarked that the central stone alone was worth an estate.
If she deprived herself of this superb ornament, the despairing old mother would be consoled, and the lovely child saved from hunger and disgrace.
With Barbara, thought, resolve, and action followed one another in rapid succession.
"You shall have what you need to-morrow," she called to the marquise, kissed--obeying a hasty impulse--her little namesake's picture, rejected any expression of thanks from the astonished old dame, and went to rest.
Frau Lerch had never seen her so radiant with happiness, yet she was irritated by the reserve of the girl for whom she thought she had sacrificed so much, yet whose new garments had already brought her more profit than the earnings of the three previous years.
The next morning Master Jamnitzer called the valuable star his own, and pledged himself to keep the matter secret, and to obtain from the Fuggers a bill of exchange upon Paris for ten thousand lire.
The honest man sent her through the Haller banking house a thousand ducats, that he might not be open to the reproach of having defrauded her.
Yet the gold which she did not need for the marquise seemed to Barbara like money unjustly obtained.

While she was riding out at noon, Frau Lerch found it in her chest, and thought that she now knew what had made the girl so happy the day before.

She was all the more indignant when, soon after, Barbara gave half the new wealth to the Prebrunn town clerk to distribute among the poor journeymen potters whose huts had been burned down the previous night.