often happened before, the memory of it overmastered her with such
power that she could not escape it, but recalled his every look and
movement. Meanwhile, she imagined that she heard his voice, whose deep,
pure tones had pleased her ear, alive to harmony, more than any to which
she had ever listened, counselling her to give up her vagrant life, and
again received his assurance that he pitied her, and it would grieve him
if she, who seemed worthy of a better fate, should be ruined, body and
soul, so young. Thus absorbed, she neither saw nor listened to anything
that was occurring near her or in the large room of the tavern, but stood
gazing into vacancy as if rapt away from earth.

True, Cyriax and the others had lowered their voices, for they were
talking about her and the aristocratic couple on whose wedding day Kuni
had stolen the rosary.

Raban, a tall, lank vagabond with red-rimmed eyes, whose ugly face
bristled with a half-grown black beard, had a few more particulars to
give concerning the bride and bridegroom. He wandered about the world
and, whenever he stretched out his hand to beg, gave the pretext that he
was collecting the price of blood required for a man whom he had killed
in self-defence, that his own head might not fall under the axe of the
executioner. His dead father had heated the furnaces in the smelting
works at Eschenbach, near Nuremberg, and the bride was Katharina, the
eldest of the three daughters of the owner, old Harsdorffer of the
Council. He had been a man of steel and iron, and opposed Lienhard
Groland's father at every point, not excepting even their official
business. When he discovered that the young man was carrying on a love
affair with his daughter, he had summoned him before a court of justice
for a breach of the law which forbade minors to betroth themselves
without parental consent. The magistrates sentenced Lienhard to five
years' exile from the city but, through the Emperor's mediation, he was
spared the punishment. Old Harsdorffer afterward succeeded in keeping the
suitor away from his daughter a long time, but finally relinquished his
opposition.

"The devil came soon enough and broke his stiff neck," added Cyriax, on
whom the vagabond's story had had the same effect as a red rag upon a
bull. Spite of the old slanderer's mutilated tongue, invectives flowed
fast enough from his lips when he thought of young Frau Groland's father.
If the Groland outside resembled his father-i