nder ecclesiastical
jurisdiction, and committed the further disposal of the burglar's fate
to the Dominican whom the almoner had placed there. For the present he
might remain in secular custody. Early the following morning he must be
brought before the Spanish Dominicans who had come with the Emperor,
and from whom greater severity might be expected than from the Ratisbon
brotherhood, by whom monastic discipline had been greatly relaxed.

Meanwhile the wind had subsided, and the storm had burst with thunder,
lightning, and torrents of rain. Priests and laymen retreated into
the house, and so did Barbara and the marquise. The latter had exposed
herself to the tempest only long enough to emphasize the necessity of
delivering the heretical night-bird to the Spanish Dominicans very early
the next morning, and to show Barbara that she did not overlook the
significance of the incidents under the lindens. With a disagreeable
blending of tenderness and malice, she congratulated the young girl on
the applause she had received as a dancer, the special favour which she
had enjoyed from the Duke of Saxony, and the arrest of the dangerous
burglar, which would also be a gratification to his Majesty.

With these words the old aristocrat, coughing slightly, tripped up the
stairs; but Barbara, without vouchsafing an answer to this speech, whose
purpose she clearly understood, turned her back upon her and went to her
own room.

She had desired no gift in return when, to save this contemptible
woman's son and his child, she sacrificed her lover's precious memento;
but the base reward for the kind deed added a burning sense of pain to
the other sorrows which the day had brought. What a shameful crime was
ingratitude! None could be equally hateful to eternal justice, for--she
now learned it by her own experience--ingratitude repaid kindness with
evil instead of with good, and paralyzed the disappointed benefactor's
will to perform another generous deed.

When she entered her sleeping-room the courage which she had summoned
during the walk, and the hope to which she had yielded, appeared to be
scattered and blown away as if by a gust of wind. Besides, she could not
conceal from herself that she had drawn the nails from the planks of her
wrecked ship of life with her own hand.

Did it not seem as if she had intentionally done precisely what she
ought most studiously to have left undone? Her sale of the star had been
only an unfortunate a