appeared to howl around her, bearing her away she knew not whither. It
seemed as though the tempest had seized the ends of the rope, and was
dealing terrible blows with them upon her shoulders, her back, and her
feet. Meanwhile the little wearer of the wreath was lying on a black
cloud opposite to her at Lienhard's feet.

She still held the sheet in her hand, and was shouting to the angry
elements the magic formulas which it contained. Their power Kuni knew
it--had unchained them. Lienhard's deep voice mingled with her furious
cries until the roar of the sea, on whose rocky shore the hurricane must
have dashed her, drowned every other sound, and rolled over her,
sometimes in scorching crimson, sometimes in icy crystal waves. Then, for
a long time, she saw and heard nothing more.

When her deadened imagination again began to stir, she fancied that she
was struggling with a huge crab, which was cutting her foot with shears.
The little elf was urging it on, as the huntsmen cheer the hounds. The
pain and hate she felt would have been intolerable if Lienhard had made
common cause with the terrible child. But he reproved her conduct, and
even struggled with the kobold who tried to prevent his releasing her
from the crab. The elf proved stronger than he. The terrible shears
continued to torture her. The more she suffered, the more eagerly
Lienhard seemed trying to help her, and this soothed her and blended a
sweet sense of comfort with the burning pain.




CHAPTER VI.

Kuni remained under the spell of these delusions for many days and
nights. When she at last regained her senses, she was lying on a plain
couch in a long, whitewashed hall. The well-scoured floor was strewn with
sand and pine needles. Other beds stood beside hers. On one wall hung a
large wooden crucifix, painted with glaring colours; on the other a
touching picture of the Mater Dolorosa, with the swords in her heart,
looked down upon her.

Beside Kuni's pallet stood a Gray Sister and an elderly man, evidently a
physician. His long black robe, tall dark cap, and gold headed cane bore
witness to it. Bending forward, with eyeglasses on his prominent nose, he
gazed intently into her face.

Her return to consciousness seemed to please him, and he showed himself
to be a kind, experienced leech. With tireless solicitude he strove to
cure the numerous injuries which she had received, and she soon learned
through him and the nun, that she had fallen from the rope and escaped
death as if by a miracle. The triumphal arch under her, and the garlands
which decorated the wooden structure, had caught her before she touched
the pavement. True, her right leg was broken, and it had been necessary
to amputate her left foot in order to save her life. Many a wound and
slash on her breast and head also needed healing, and her greatest
ornament, her long, thick, dark hair, had been cut off.

Why had they called her, the ropedancer, back to a life which
henceforward could offer her nothing save want and cruel suffering? She
uttered this reproach to her preservers very indignantly; but as the
physician saw her eating a bunch of grapes with much enjoyment, he asked
if this pleasure did not suffice to make her rejoice over the
preservation of her existence. There were a thousand similar gifts of
God, which scarcely seemed worthy of notice, yet in the aggregate
outweighed a great sorrow which, moreover, habit daily diminished.

The Sister tried, by other arguments, to reconcile her to the life which
had been preserved, but the words her devout heart inspired and which
were intended for a pious soul, produced little influence upon the
neglected child of the highroad. Kuni felt most deeply the reference to
the sorely afflicted Mother of God. If such sorrow had been sent to the
noblest and purest of mortals, through whom God had deigned to give his
divine Son to the world, what grief could be too great for her, the
wandering vagabond? She often silently repeated this to herself; yet only
too frequently her impetuous heart rebelled against the misery which she
felt that she would encounter. But many weeks were to pass before she
recovered; a severe relapse again endangered her life.

During the first days of illness she had talked to Lienhard in her
fevered visions, called him by name, and warned him against the spiteful
elf who would ruin him. Frequently, too, oaths and horrible, coarse
imprecations, such as are heard only from the mouths of the vagrants
among whom she had grown to womanhood, fell from her burning lips. When
she improved, the leech asked in the jesting tone which elderly men are
fond of using to young women whose heart secrets they think they have
detected, what wrong her lover had done her. The Sister, nay, even the
abbess, wished to learn what she meant by the wicked witch whom she had
mentioned with such terrible curses during the ravings of the fever, but
she made no reply. In fact, she said very little, and her nurses thought
her a reserved creature with an obdurate nature; for she obstinately
rejected the consolations of religion.

Only to her confessor, a kind old priest, who knew how to discover the
best qualities in every one, did she open her heart so far as to reveal
that she loved the husband of another and had once wished evil, ay, the
very worst evil, to a neighbour. But since the sin had been committed
only in thought, the kindly guardian of her conscience was quickly
disposed to grant her absolution if, as a penance, she would repeat a
goodly number of paternosters and undertake a pilgrimage. If she had had
sound feet, she ought to have journeyed to Santiago di Compostella; but,
since her condition precluded this, a visit to Altotting in Bavaria would
suffice. But Kuni by no means desired any mitigation of the penance. She
silently resolved to undertake the pilgrimage to Compostella, at the
World's End,--[Cape Finisterre]--in distant Spain, though she did not
know how it would be possible to accomplish this with her mutilated foot.
Not even to her kind confessor did she reveal this design. The girl who
had relied upon herself from childhood, needed no explanation, no
confidante.

Therefore, during the long days and nights which she was obliged to spend
in bed, she pondered still more constantly upon her own past. That she
had been drawn and was still attracted to Lienhard with resistless power,
was true; yet whom, save herself, had this wounded or injured? On the
other hand, it had assuredly been a heavy sin that she had called down
such terrible curses upon the child. Still, even now she might have had
good reason to execrate the wearer of the wreath; for she alone, not
Lienhard, was the sole cause of her misfortune. Her prayer on the rope
that the saints would destroy the hated child, and the idea which then
occupied her mind, that she was really a grown maiden, whose elfin
delicacy of figure was due to her being one of the fays or elves
mentioned in the fairy tales, had made a deep impression upon her memory.

Whenever she thought of that supplication she again felt the bitterness
she had tasted on the rope. Though she believed herself justified in
hating the little mischief-maker, the prayer uttered before her fall did
not burden her soul much less heavily than a crime. Suppose the Sister
was right, and that the saints heard every earnest petition?

She shuddered at the thought. The child was so young, so delicate. Though
she had caused her misfortune, the evil was not done intentionally. Such
thoughts often induced Kuni to clasp her hands and pray to the saint not
to fulfil the prayer she uttered at that time; but she did not continue
the petition long, a secret voice whispered that every living
creature--man and beast--felt the impulse to inflict a similar pang on
those who caused suffering, and that she, who believed the whole world
wicked, need not be better than the rest.

Meanwhile she longed more and more eagerly to know the name of the little
creature that had brought so much trouble upon her, and whether she was
still forcing herself between Lienhard and his beautiful wife.

As soon as she was able to talk again, she began her inquiries. The
Sister, who was entirely absorbed in her calling and never left the scene
of her wearisome toil, had little to tell; but the leech and the priest,
in reply to her questions concerning what had happened during the period
of her unconsciousness, informed her that the Emperor had ordered that
she should receive the most careful nursing, and had bestowed a donation
upon the convent for the purpose. He had thought of her future, too. When
she recovered, she would have the five heller pounds which the generous
sovereign had left for her as a partial compensation for the injuries
sustained while employing her rare skill for the delight of the multitude
and, above all, himself. A wealthy Nuremberg Honourable, Lienhard
Groland, a member of the Council, had also interested himself in her and
deposited the same amount with the abbess, in case she should recover the
use of her limbs and did not prefer to spend the remainder of her life
here, though only as a lay sister. In that case he would be ready to
defray the cost of admission.

"That the lofty convent walls might rise between him and the sight of
me!" Kuni said to herself at this information, with a bitter smile. On
the--other hand, her eyes filled with tears of genuine emotion and
sincere shame, when she learned from the leech that Herr Lienhard
Groland's lovely wife had come daily to the convent to inquire about her,
and had even honoured her couch with a visit several times. She did not
remain absent until one day, in the noble lady's presence, Kuni, when her
fever was fiercest, loaded the wearer of the wreath, whom her delirium
often brought before her as a nightmare, with the most savage and
blasphemous curses. The gracious young wife was overwhelmed with horror,
which had doubtless prevented her return, unless her absence was due to
departure from the city. Besides, she had committed the care of inquiring
about her convalescence to an aristocratic friend in Augsburg, the wife
of the learned city clerk, Doctor Peutinger, a member of the famous
Welser family of Augsburg. The latter had often inquired for her in
person, until the illness of her own dear child had kept her at home.
Yet, in spite of this, her housekeeper had appeared the day before to
inform the abbess that, if the injured girl should recover and wished to
lead a respectable life in future, she might be sure of a welcome and
easy duties in her own household. This surely ought to be a great comfort
to Kuni, the physician added; for she could no longer pursue
rope-dancing, and the Peutingers were lavishly endowed with worldly goods
and intellectual gifts, and, besides, were people of genuine Christian
spirit. The convent, too, would be ready to receive her--the abbess had
told him so--if Herr Groland, of Nuremberg, kept his promise of paying
her admission dues.

All these things awakened a new world of thoughts and feelings in the
convalescent. That they ought, above all, to have aroused sincere
gratitude, she felt keenly, yet she could not succeed in being especially
thankful. It would be doing Lienhard a favour, she repeated to herself,
if she should enter a convent, and she would rather have sought shelter
in a lion's den than under the Peutinger roof. She had been informed the
day before that the city clerk's wife was the mother of the child upon
whom she had called down misfortune and death.

The keeper of an Augsburg bath-house, who had burned herself with boiling
water, occupied the next bed. She was recovering, and was a talkative
woman, whose intrusive loquacity at first annoyed Kuni, nay, when she
could not silence it, caused her pain. But her conversation soon revealed
that she knew every stick and stone in her native city. Kuni availed
herself of this, and did not need to ask many questions to learn
everything that she desired to know about the little beggar-landed elf.

She was Juliane, the young daughter of Herr Conrad Peutinger, the city
clerk--a girl of unusual cleverness, and a degree of learning never
before found in a child eleven years old. The bath-house keeper had many
wonderful stories to relate of her remarkable wisdom, with which even
highly educated men could not vie. In doing so, she blamed the father and
mother, who had been unnatural parents to the charming child; for to make
the marvel complete, and to gratify their own vanity, they had taxed the
little girl's mind with such foolish strenuousness that the frail body
suffered. She had heard this in her own bath-house from the lips of the
child's aunt and from other distinguished friends of the Welsers and
Peutingers. Unfortunately, these sensible women proved to have been
right; for soon after the close of the Reichstag, Juliane was attacked by
a lingering illness, from which rumour now asserted that she would never
recover. Some people even regarded the little girl's sickness as a just
punishment of God, to whom the constant devotion of the father and his
young daughter to the old pagans and their ungodly writings must have
given grave offence.

This news increased to the utmost the anxiety from which Kuni had long
suffered. Often as she thought of Lienhard, she remembered still more
frequently that it was she, who had prayed for sickness to visit the
child of a mother, who had so kindly offered her, the strolling player,
whom good women usually shunned, the shelter of her distinguished house.

The consciousness of owing a debt of gratitude to those, against whom she
had sinned so heavily, oppressed her. The kind proposal of the sick
child's mother seemed like a mockery. It was painful even to hear the
name of Peutinger.

Besides, the further she advanced toward recovery, the more unendurable
appeared the absence of liberty. The kind efforts of the abbess to keep
her in the cloister, and teach her to make herself useful there by
sewing, were unsuccessful; for she could not turn the spinning wheel on
account of her amputated foot, and she had neither inclination nor
patience for the finer branches of needlework.

Those who charged her with a lamentable lack of perseverance were right;
the linen which she began to hem fell into her lap only too soon. When
her eyes--which could see nothing here except a small walled yard--closed
while she was working, the others thought that she was asleep; but her
mind remained awake, though she had lowered her lids, and it wandered
restlessly over valleys rivers, and mountains through the wide, wide
world. She saw herself in imagination travelling along the highway with
nimble jugglers merry musicians, and other care-free vagrant folk,
instead of plying the needle. Even the whirling dust, the rushing wind,
and the refreshing rain outside seemed desirable compared with the heavy
convent air impregnated by a perpetual odour of lavender.

When at last, in the month of March, little Afra, the fair-haired niece
of the portress, brought her the first snowdrop, and Kuni saw a pair of
starlings enter the box on the budding linden before her window, she
could no longer bear her imprisonment in the convent.

Within these walls she must fade, perhaps die and return to dust. In
spite of all the warnings, representations, entreaties, and promises of
those who--she gratefully perceived it--meant well toward her, she
persisted in her desire to be dismissed, to live out of doors as she had
always done. At last they paid her what was due, but she accepted only
the Emperor's bounty, proudly refusing Lienhard Groland's money,
earnestly as she was urged to add it to the other and to the viaticum
bestowed by the nuns.




CHAPTER VII.

The April sun was shining brightly when the convent gates closed behind
Kuni. The lindens in the square were already putting forth young leaves,
the birds were singing, and her heart swelled more joyously than it had
done for many years.

True, the cough which had tormented her all winter attacked her in the
shady cloister, but she had learned to use her wooden foot, and with a
cane in one hand and her little bundle in the other she moved sturdily
on. After making her pilgrimage to Compostella, she intended to seek her
old employer, Loni. Perhaps he could give her a place as crier, or if the
cough prevented that, in collecting the money or training the children.
He was a kind-hearted man. If he were even tolerably prosperous he would
certainly let her travel with the band, and give the girl who was injured
in his service the bit of food she required. Besides, in former days,
when she scattered gold with lavish hands, he had predicted what had now
befallen her, and when he left Augsburg he had asked the nuns to tell her
that if she should ever be in want she must remember Loni.

With the Emperor's five heller pounds, and the two florins which she had
received as a viaticum from the convent, she could journey a long
distance through the world; for there were plenty of carriers and
travellers with carts and wagons who would take her for a trifle, and the
vagabonds on the highway rarely left people like her in the lurch.

Probably, in former days, she had looked forward to the future with
greater strength and different expectations, yet, even as it was, in
spite of the cough and the painful pricking in her scars, she found it
pleasant so long as she was free and could follow whatever way she chose.
She knew the city, and limped through the streets and alleys toward the
tavern where the strolling players usually lodged.

On the way she met a gentleman in a suit of light armour, whom she
recognised in the distance as the Knight of Neckerfels, who had been
paying court to her before her fall. He was walking alone and looked her
directly in the face, but he did not have the slightest idea that he had
met madcap Kuni. It was only too evident that he supposed her to be a
total stranger. Yet it would have been impossible for any one to
recognise her.

Mirrors were not allowed in the convent, but a bright new tin plate had
showed her her emaciated face with the broad scar on the forehead, the
sunken eyes, and the whole narrow head, where the hair, which grew out
again very slowly, was just an ugly length. Now the sight of the bony
hand which grasped the cane brought a half-sorrowful, half-scornful,
smile to her lips. Her arm had been plump and round, but was now little
larger than a stick. Pretty Kuni, the ropedancer, no longer existed; she
must become accustomed to have the world regard her as a different and
far less important personage, whom Lienhard, too--and this was
fortunate--would not have deemed worthy of a glance.

And yet, if the inner self is the true one, there was little change in
her. Her soul was moved by the same feelings, only there was now a touch
of bitterness. One great advantage of her temperament, it is true, had
vanished with her physical beauty and strength--the capacity to hope for
happiness and joy. Perhaps it would never return; an oppressive feeling
of guilt, usually foreign to her careless nature, had oppressed her ever
since she had heard recently in the convent that the child on whom she
had called down death and destruction was lying hopelessly ill, and would
scarcely live till the joyous Whitsuntide.

This now came back to her mind. The jubilant sense of freedom deserted
her; she walked thoughtfully on until she reached the neighbourhood of
Jacob Fugger's house.

A long funeral procession was moving slowly toward her. Some very exalted
and aristocratic person must be taking the journey to the grave, for it
was headed by all the clergy in the city. Choristers, in the most
elaborate dress, swinging incense holders by delicate metal chains and
bearing lanterns on long poles, surrounded the lofty cross.

Every one of distinction in Augsburg, all the children who attended
school, and all the members of the various ecclesiastical orders and
guilds in the city marched before the bier. Kuni had never seen such a
funeral procession. Perhaps the one she witnessed in Milan, when a great
nobleman was buried, was longer, but in this every individual seemed to
feel genuine grief. Even the schoolboys who, on such solemn occasions,
usually play all sorts of secret pranks, walked as mournfully as if each
had lost some relative who was specially dear to him. Among the girls
there were few whose rosy cheeks were not constantly wet with tears.

From the first Kuni had believed that she knew who was being borne to the
grave. Now she heard several women whispering near her mention the name
of Juliane Peutinger. A pale-faced gold embroiderer, who had recently
bordered a gala dress with leaves and tendrils for the dead girl's
sister, described, sobbing, the severe suffering amid which this fairest
blossom of Augsburg girlhood had withered ere death finally broke the
slender stem.

Suddenly she stopped; a cry of mingled astonishment, lamentation, and
delight, sometimes rising, sometimes falling, ran through the crowd which
had gathered along the sides of the street.

The bier was in sight.

Twelve youths bore the framework, covered with a richly embroidered blue
cloth, on which the coffin rested. It was open, and the dead girl's couch
was so high that it seemed as though the sleeper was only resting lightly
on the white silk pillow. A wreath again encircled her head, but this
time blossoming myrtles blended with the laurel in the brown curls that
lay in thick, soft locks on the snowy pillows and the lace-trimmed
shroud.

Juliane's eyes were closed. Ah! how gladly Kuni would have kissed those
long-lashed lids to win even one look of forgiveness from her whom her
curse had perhaps snatched from the green spring world!

She remembered the sunny radiance with which this sleeper's eyes had
sparkled as they met Lienhard's. They were the pure mirror of the keen,
mobile intellect and the innocent, loving soul of this rare child. Now
death had closed them, and Juliane's end had been one of suffering. The
pale embroiderer had said so, and the sorrowful droop of the sweet little
mouth, which gave the wondrously beautiful, delicate, touching little
face so pathetic an expression, betrayed it. If the living girl had
measured her own young intellect with that of grown people, and her face
had worn the impress of precocious maturity, now it was that of a
charming child who had died in suffering.

Kuni also felt this, and asked herself how it had been possible for her
heart to cherish such fierce hatred against this little one, who had
numbered only eleven years.

But had this Juliane resembled other children?

No, no! No Emperor's daughter of her age would have been accompanied to
the churchyard with such pageantry, such deep, universal grief.

She had been the jewel of a great city. This was proclaimed by many a
Greek and Latin maxim on tablets borne by the friends of the great
humanist who, with joyful pride, called her his daughter.

Kuni could not read, but she heard at least one sentence translated by a
Benedictine monk to the nun at his side: "He whose death compels those
who knew him to weep, has the fairest end."--[Seneca, Hippol., 881.]

If this were true, Juliane's end was indeed fair; for she herself, whom
the child had met only to inflict pain, had her eyes dimmed by tears, and
wherever she turned she saw people weeping.

Most of those who lined the street could have had no close relations with
the dead girl. But yonder black-robed mourners who followed the bier were
her parents, her brothers and sisters, her nearest relatives, the members
of the Council, and the family servants. And she, the wretched, reckless,
sinful, crippled strolling player, for whom not a soul on earth cared,
whose death would not have drawn even a single tear from any eye, to whom
a speedy end could be only a benefit, was perhaps the cause of the
premature drying up of this pure fountain of joy, which had refreshed so
many hearts and animated them with the fairest hopes.

The tall lady, whose noble face and majestic figure were shrouded in a
thick veil, was Juliane's mother--and she had offered the sick ropedancer
a home in her wealthy household.

"If she had only known," thought Kuni, "the injury I was inflicting upon
her heart's treasure, she would rather have hunted me with dogs from her
threshold."

In spite of the veil which floated around the stately figure of the
grieving mother, she could see her bosom rise and fall with her sobs of
anguish. Kuni's compassionate heart made it impossible for her to watch
this sorrow longer, and, covering her face with her hands, she turned her
back upon the procession and, weeping aloud, limped away as fast as her
injured foot would let her. Meanwhile she sometimes said to herself that
she was the worst of all sinners because she had cursed the dead girl and
called down death and destruction upon her head, sometimes she listened
to the voice within, which told her that she had no reason to grieve over
Juliane's death, and completely embitter her already wretched life by
remorse and self-accusations; the dead girl was the sole cause of her
terrible fall. But the defiant rebellion against the consciousness of
guilt, which moved her so deeply, always ceased abruptly as soon as it
raised its head; for one fact was positive, if the curse she had called
down upon the innocent child, who had done her no intentional wrong, had
really caused Juliane's end, a whole life was not long enough to atone
for the sin which she had committed. Yet what atonement was still in her
power, after the death which she had summoned had performed its terrible
work of executioner?

"Nothing, nothing at all!" she said to herself angrily, resolving, as she
had so often done with better success, to forget what had happened, cast
the past into oblivion, and live in the present as before. But ere she
could attempt to fulfil this determination, the image of the tall,
grief-bowed figure of the woman who had called Juliane her dear child
rose before her mind, and it seemed as if a cold, heavy hand paralyzed
the wings of the light-hearted temperament which had formerly borne her
pleasantly over so many things. Then she told herself that, in order not
to go to perdition herself, she must vow, sacrifice, undertake everything
for the salvation of the dead girl and of her own heavily burdened soul.
For the first time she felt a longing to confide her feelings to some
one. If Lienhard had been within reach and disposed to listen to her, he
would have understood, and known what course to advise.

True, the thought that he was not looking at her when she took the fatal
leap still haunted her. He could not have showed more offensively how
little he cared for her--but perhaps he was under the influence of a
spell; for she must be something to him. This was no vain self-deception;
had it not been so, would he have come in person to her couch of pain, or
cared for her so kindly after the accident?

In the convent she had reached the conviction that it would be degrading
to think longer of the man who, in return for the most ardent love,
offered nothing but alms in jingling coin; yet her poor heart would not
cease its yearning.

Meanwhile she never wearied of seeking motives that would place his
conduct in a more favourable light. Whatever he might have withheld from
her, he was nevertheless the best and noblest of men, and as she limped
aimlessly on, the conviction strengthened that the mere sight of him
would dispel the mists which, on this sunny spring day, seemed to veil
everything around and within her.

But he remained absent, and suddenly it seemed more disgraceful to seek
him than to stand in the stocks.

Yet the pilgrimage to Compostella, of which the confessor had spoken? For
the very reason that it had been described to her as unattainable, it
would perhaps be rated at a high value in heaven, and restore to her
while on earth the peace she had lost.

She pondered over this thought on her way to the tavern, where she found
a corner to sleep, and a carrier who, on the day after the morrow, would
take her to the sea for a heller pound. Other pilgrims had also engaged
passage at Antwerp for Corunna, the harbour of Compostella, and her means
were sufficient for the voyage. This assurance somewhat soothed her while
she remained among people of her own calling.

But she spent a sleepless night; for again and again the dead child's
image appeared vividly before her. Rising from the soft pillows in the
coffin, she shook her finger threateningly at her, or, weeping and
wailing, pointed down to the flames--doubtless those of purgatory--which
were blazing upward around her, and had already caught the hem of her
shroud.

Kuni arose soon after sunrise with a bewildered brain. Before setting out
on her pilgrimage she wished to attend mass, and--that the Holy Virgin
might be aware of her good intentions--repeat in church some of the
paternosters which her confessor had imposed.

She went out with the simple rosary that the abbess had given her upon
her wrist, but when she had left the tavern behind she saw a great crowd
in front of the new St. Ulrich's Church, and recognised among the throngs
of people who had flocked thither her companion in suffering at the
convent, the keeper of the bath-house, who had been cured of her burns
long before.

She had left her business to buy an indulgence for her own sins, and to
purchase for the soul of her husband--whose death-bed confession, it is
true, had been a long one--for the last time, but for many centuries at
once, redemption from the fires of purgatory. The Dominican friar Tetzel,
from Nuremberg, was here with his coffer, and carried written promises
which secured certain remission of punishment for all sins, even those
committed long ago, or to be committed in the future. The woman had
experienced the power of his papers herself. Tetzel had come to Augsburg
about a year after her husband's death, and, as she knew how many sins he
had committed, she put her hand into her purse to free him from the
flames. They must have burned very fiercely; for, while awake at night
and in her dreams, she had often heard him wailing and complaining
piteously. But after she bought the paper he became quiet and, on the
third night, she saw him with her own eyes enter the room, and heard him
promise her a great happiness in return for her faithful remembrance.

The very next Sunday, Veit Haselnuss, the bath-house proprietor, a
well-to-do man who owned another house besides the one where he lived,
invited her to take a walk with him. She knew instantly that her late
husband was beginning to pay his debt of gratitude with this visitor and,
in fact, a short time after, the worthy man asked her to be his wife,
though she had three little children, and his oldest daughter by his
first wife was already able to look after the housekeeping. The wedding
took place on Whitsunday, and she owed this great happiness entirely to
the dispensation which had released the dead man's soul from the fires of
purgatory and induced him to show his thankfulness.

Kuni listened to her companion's rapid flood of talk, until she herself
enjoined silence to hear the black-robed priest who stood beside the
coffer.

He was just urging his hearers, in a loud voice, to abandon the base
avarice which gathers pence. There was still time to gain, in exchange
for dead florins, living salvation.

Let those who repented sin listen, and they would hear the voices of
wailing parents, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, and children, who
had preceded them to the other world. Whose heart was so utterly turned
to stone, whose parsimony, spite of all his love of money, was so strong
that he would allow these tortured souls to burn and suffer in the
flames, when it was in his power, by putting his hand into his purse, to
buy a dispensation which would as surely redeem them from the fires of
purgatory as his Imperial Majesty's pardon would release an imprisoned
thief from jail?

Scales seemed to fall from Kuni's eyes. She hastily forced her way to the
Dominican, who was just wiping the perspiration from his brow with the
hem of the white robe under his black cowl.

Coughing and panting, he was preparing his voice for a fresh appeal,
meanwhile opening the iron-bound box, and pointing out to the throng the
placard beside his head, which announced that the money obtained by the
indulgences was intended for the Turkish war. Then, in fluent language,
he explained to the bystanders that this meant that the Holy Father in
Rome intended to drive the hereditary foe of Christianity back to the
steppes and deserts of the land of Asia, where he belonged. In order to
accomplish this work, so pleasing to the Lord, the Church was ready to
make lavish use of the treasures of mercy intrusted to her. Deliverance
from the flames of purgatory would never be more cheaply purchased than
at this opportunity. Then he thrust his little fat hand, on which several
valuable rings glittered, into the box, and held out to the bystanders a
small bundle of papers like an open pack of cards.

Kuni summoned up her courage and asked whether they would also possess
the power to remove a curse. Tetzel eagerly assented, adding that he had
papers which would wash the soul as white from every sin as soap would
cleanse a sooty hand, even though, instead of "curse," its name was
"parricide."

The most costly had the power to transfer scoundrels roasting in the
hottest flames of purgatory to the joys of paradise, as yonder sparrow
had just soared from the dust of the street to the elm bough.

Kuni timidly asked the price of an indulgence, but the Dominican
unctuously explained that they were not sold like penny rolls at the
baker's; the heavier the sin, the higher the fine to be paid. First of
all, she must confess sincere contrition for what had been done and
inform him how, in spite of her youth, she had been led into such heinous
guilt. Kuni replied that she had long mourned her error most deeply, and
then began to whisper to Tetzel how she had been induced to curse a
fellow-mortal. She desired nothing for herself. Her sole wish was to
release the dead girl from the flames of purgatory, and the curse which,
by her guilt, burdened her soul. But the Dominican had only half
listened, and as many who wanted indulgences were crowding around his
box, he interrupted Kuni by offering her a paper which he would make out
in the name of the accursed Juliane Peutinger--if he had heard correctly.

Such cases seemed to be very familiar to him, but the price he asked was
so large that the girl grew pale with terror.

Yet she must have the redeeming paper, and Tetzel lowered his price after
her declaration that she possessed only five heller pounds and the
convent viaticum. Besides, she stated that she had already bargained with
the carrier for the journey to the sea.

This, however, had no influence upon the Dominican, as the indulgence
made the pilgrimage to Compostella unnecessary. Since it would redeem the
accursed person from the fires of purgatory, she, too, was absolved from
the vow which drew her thither.

With stern decision he therefore insisted upon demanding the entire sum
in her possession. He could only do it so cheaply because her face and
her lost foot showed that she was destined to suffer part of the eternal
torture here on earth.

Then Kuni yielded. The paper was made out in the name of Juliane, she
gave up her little store, and returned to the inn a penniless beggar, but
with a lighter heart, carrying the precious paper under the handkerchief
crossed over her bosom. But there the carrier refused her a seat without
the money which she had promised him, and the landlord demanded payment
for her night's lodging and the bit of food she had eaten.

Should she go back to the convent and ask for the little sum which
Lienhard had left there for her?

The struggle was a hard one, but pride finally conquered. She renounced
the kindly meant gift of her only friend. When the abbess returned the
money to him, he could not help perceiving that she was no beggar and
scorned to be his debtor. If he then asked himself why, he would find the
right answer. She did not confess it to herself in plain words, but she
wished to remain conscious that, whether he desired it or not, she had
given her heart's best love to this one man without reward, merely
because it was her pleasure to do it. At last she remembered that she
still possessed something valuable. She had not thought of it before,
because it had been as much a part of herself as her eyes or her lips,
and it would have seemed utterly impossible to part with it. This article
was a tolerably heavy gold ring, with a sparkling ruby in the centre. She
had drawn it from her father's finger after he had taken his last leap
and she was called to his corpse. She did not even know whether he had
received the circlet as a wedding ring from the mother of whom she had no
remembrance, or where he obtained it. But she had heard that it was of
considerable value, and when she set off to sell the jewel, she did not
find it very hard to gave it up. It seemed as if her father, from the
grave, was providing his poor child with the means she needed to continue
to support her life.

She had heard in the convent of Graslin, the goldsmith, who had bestowed
on the chapel a silver shrine for the relics, and went to him.

When she stood before the handsome gableroofed house which he occupied
she shrank back a little. At first he received her sternly and
repellantly enough, but, as soon as she introduced herself as the
ropedancer who had met with the accident, he showed himself to be a
kindly old gentleman.

After one of the city soldiers had said that she told the truth and had
just been dismissed from the convent, he paid her the full value of the
ring and added a florin out of sympathy and the admiration he felt for
the charm which still dwelt in her sparkling blue eyes.

But Compostella was indeed far away. Her new supply of money was
sufficient for the journey there, but how could she return? Besides, her
cough troubled her very seriously, and it seemed as though she could not
travel that long distance alone. The dealer in indulgences had said that
the paper made the pilgrimage unnecessary, and the confessor in the
convent had only commanded her to go to Altotting. With this neighbouring
goal before her, she turned her back upon Augsburg the following morning.

Her hope of meeting on the way compassionate people, who would give her a
seat in their vehicles, was fulfilled. She reached Altotting sooner than
she had expected. During the journey, sometimes in a peasant's cart,
sometimes in a freight wagon, she had thought often of little Juliane,
and always with a quiet, nay, a contented heart. In the famous old
church, at the end of her pilgrimage, she saw a picture in which the
raked souls of children were soaring upward to heaven from the flames
blazing around them in purgatory.

The confessor had sent her to the right place.

Here a fervent prayer had the power to rescue a child's soul from the
fires of purgatory. Many other votive pictures, the pilgrims at the inn,
and a priest whom she questioned, confirmed it. She also heard from
various quarters that she had not paid too high a price for the
indulgence. This strengthened her courage and henceforward, nay, even
during the time of sore privation which she afterward endured, she
blessed a thousand times her resolve to buy the ransoming paper from
Tetzel, the Dominican; for she thought that she daily experienced its
power.

Whenever Juliane appeared, her face wore a friendly expression--nay,
once, in a dream, she floated before her as if she wished to thank her,
in the form of a beautiful angel with large pink and white wings. She no
longer needed to fear the horrible curse which she had called down upon
the little one, and once more thought of Lienhard with pleasure. When he
learned in the other world how she had atoned for the wrong which she had
done his little favourite, she would be sure of his praise.

To be held in light esteem, nay, even despised, was part of her calling,
like her constant wandering. She had longed for applause in her art, but
for herself she had desired nothing save swift draughts of pleasure,
since she had learned how little she was regarded by the only person
whose opinion she valued. She could never have expected that he would
hold her in high esteem, since he was so indifferent to her art that he
did not even think it worth while to lift his eyes to the rope. Yet the
idea that he placed her in the same rank with others in her profession
seemed unendurable. But she need grieve over this no longer, and when she
remembered that even the sorest want had not been able to induce her to