beloved mistress.

Thus they fared forth to the Levant; and this once again we were doomed
to vain hopes. Kunz found not him he sought, but a wild Swiss soldier
who had fallen into the hands of the Saracens. Him he ransomed, as being
a Christian man, for a small sum of money; and as for Akusch he left
him at Joppa, whereas his folk were Egyptians and he deemed he had found
some track of them there.

Kunz did not go thither with him, inasmuch as in Alexandria all had been
done that might be done to discover and ransom a Frankish captive. Nor
was Akusch idle there, and moreover fate had brought another child of
Nuremberg to that place.

Ursula had become the wife of the Marchese Anselmo Giustiniani, by
special favor of the great council, and had come with him to Egypt,
whither he was sent by the Republic as Consul. There she now dwelt with
her noble lord, and in many letters to my granduncle she warmly declared
to him that, so far as in her lay, all should be done to discover where
the lover of her youth might be. Her husband was the most powerful Frank
in all the Sultan's dominions, and it was a joy to her to see with
what diligence he made search for the lost youth. Herdegen, indeed, had
ill-repaid her childish love, yet she knew of no nobler revenge than to
lay him under the debt of thanks to her and her husband for release and
ransom. These words doubtless came from the bottom of her heart; she
were no true woman if she could not forgive a man in misfortune for the
sins of a happier time. And above all she was ever of a rash and lawless
mind, and truthful even to the scorn of modesty and good manners, rather
than crafty and smooth of tongue.

Yet she likewise failed to find the vanished wanderer, and the weeks
and months grew to be years while we waited in vain. It was on the
twenty-second day of March in the second twelve month after Herdegen's
departing that the treasures of the realm, and among them a nail from
the Cross and the point of the spear wherewith they pierced the Lord's
side, were to be brought into the town in a solemn procession, and I,
with many others, rode forth to meet it. They were brought hither from
Blindenberg on the Danube, and the Emperor sent them in token of his
grace, that we might hold them in safe keeping within our strong walls.
They had been brought thus far right privily, under the feint that the
waggon wherein they were carried bore wine vats, and a great throng
gathered with sh