ven 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