a time, breath and warmth
were restored--her eyes opened. But the respiration was hurried and
impeded--the eyes glazed and dim--the sense of what was passing around
her, confused and troubled. A nervous tremour ran through her whole
frame. She lay upon a mattrass, propped up with a pile of cushions, in
a lower apartment of the palace. By her side knelt the kind Bishop of
Fulda, watching with evident solicitude the variation of the symptoms in
the unfortunate woman's frame. Behind her stood the stately form of the
Ober-Amtmann--every muscle of his usually stern face now struggling with
emotion--his hands clenched together--his head bowed down; for he had
learned from his brother the Prince, that the female lying before
him--the woman whom he had himself condemned to the stake, was really
the mistress of his younger years--the seduced wife of the man whom he
had killed--his victim, Margaret Weilheim. On the other side of the
prostrate form of Magdalena bent a grave personage in dark attire, who
held her wrist, and counted the beating of her pulse with an air of
serious attention. In answer to an enquiring look from the Prince
Bishop, the physician shook his head.

"There is life, it is true," he said; "but it is ebbing fast. The
fatigue and emotions of the past day were in themselves too much for a
frame already shattered by macerations, and privations, and grief; this
catastrophe has exhausted her last force of vitality. She cannot live
long."

The Ober-Amtmann wrung his hands with a still firmer gripe. The tears
trembled upon the good old bishop's eyelids.

"See!" said the leech; "she again opens her eyes. There is more sense in
them now."

The dying Magdalena in truth looked around her, as if she at length
became conscious of the objects on which her vision fell. She seemed to
comprehend with difficulty where she was, and how she had come into the
position in which she lay. Feebly and with exertion she raised her
emaciated arm, and passed her skinny hand over her brow and eyes. But at
length her gaze rested upon the mild face of the benevolent bishop, and
a faint smile passed over her sunken features.

"Where am I?" she murmured lowly. "Am I in paradise?--and you, reverend
father, are also with me?"

In a few kind words, the bishop strove to recall her wandering senses,
and explain to her what had happened. At last a consciousness of the
past seemed to come over her; and she shuddered in every limb at the
fearf