to induce her
to touch his alms, she could have fairly shouted for joy amid all her
misery. The conviction that one man, who was the best and noblest of his
sex, might deem her a poor, unfortunate girl, but never a creature who
deserved contempt, was the beam to which she clung, when the surges of
her pitiable, wandering life threatened to close over her and stifle
her.
CHAPTER VIII.
As Kuni's troubled soul had derived so much benefit from the short
pilgrimage to Altotting, she hoped to obtain far more from a visit to
Santiago di Compostella, famed throughout Christendom.
True, her old master, Loni, whom she had met at Regensburg, permitted
her to join his band, but when she perceived that he was far less
prosperous than before, and that she could not be useful to him in any
way, she left him at Cologne because a kindhearted captain offered to
take her to Vlissingen without pay. Thence she really did set out upon
the pilgrimage to Santiago di Compostella; but St. James, the patron
saint of the Spaniards, whose untiring mercy so many praised, did
not prove specially favourable to her. The voyage to Compostella,
the principal place where he was reverenced, which annually attracted
thousands of pilgrims, cost her her last penny, and the cold nights
which she was obliged to spend on deck increased her cough until it
became almost unendurably violent.
In Santiago di Compostella both her means and her strength were
exhausted. After vainly expecting for a long time some token of the
saint's helpful kindness, only two courses were left: either she must
remain in Compostella and join the beggars in the crowded road to the
place of pilgrimage, or she must accept the proposal made by tongueless
Cyriax and go back with him to Germany. At first she had been afraid of
the brutal fellow, who feigned insanity and was led about by his
wife with a chain; but once, when red-haired Gitta was seized by the
Inquisition, and spent two days and two nights in jail, and Kuni nursed
her child in her place, she had found him more friendly. Besides, in
Compostella, the swearer had been in his most cheerful mood. Every
day had filled his purse, because there was no lack of people and he
understood how to extort money by the terror which horrible outbreaks of
his feigned malady inspired among the densely crowded pilgrims. His wife
possessed a remedy which would instantly calm his ravings, but it was
expensive, and she had not the mone
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