made
hay, plucked strawberries, and picked up wood with them; besides this,
she learnt of them the pater-noster and the angel's salutation, as also
to say the belief; in short she made herself acquainted with Christian
doctrine, and desired earnestly to be baptized. The high born and Right
Honorable Countess of Zinkow, in order to fulfil this maiden's desire,
to her great delight took her in her carriage to Prague, that she might
there, out of sight of her parents, more securely obtain the privilege
of baptism. But after the parents had discovered that their daughter,
who had for so long a time carefully kept her designs secret, had
become a Christian, they bitterly lamented it, and were very indignant
with the priest who had blessed her in her mother's arms with the sign
of the cross, for they ascribed to him all their daughter's inclination
for Christianity.

"But by what intrigues the perfidious Jews endeavoured to frustrate
every conversion, I have myself not long since had experience, when for
the first time, a disciple in the faith of the Jewish race, Samuel
Metzel, was placed under me for instruction. The father, who had four
children yet minors, was a true Israelite, out of the Egypt of the
Jewish town, and had endeavoured, much and zealously, to bring them
all, together with himself, out of bondage. But, behold! Rosina
Metzelin, his wife, who then had a great horror of the Christian faith,
would not obey him; and when she found that the four children were
immediately withdrawn from her, this robbery of her children, was, like
the loss of her young to a lioness, hard to bear. She summoned her
husband before the Episcopal consistory, where she sued for at least
two of the four purloined children, which she had given birth to, with
great labour, pain, and weariness, both before, at, and after the time.
But the most wise tribunal of the Archbishop, decided that all the
children belonged to the husband, who was shortly to be baptized. Then
did the wife lament piteously, indeed more exceedingly than can be told
or believed; and as she was afeard that her fifth offspring, which was
yet unborn, would be stolen from her after its birth, she endeavoured
earnestly to conceal from the Christians the time of her delivery.
Therefore she determined first of all to change her place of abode, as
her present one was known to her husband and children. But there is no
striving against the Lord! The father discovered it by means o