him, and that I obey his will inasmuch as that I truly mourn the death
of his beloved; for that is verily the truth, the Virgin and the Saints
be my witness. Yet I may not and I will not open my doors to him till
he has craved my forgiveness, and if I did so he must think of his own
mother as a perjured woman."

Hereupon I showed her--and my eyes overflowed--that his oath stood forth
as against her oath, and that one was as weighty as the other in the
sight of the Most High.

"Set aside that cruel vow, my dear aunt," cried I, "I will make any
pilgrimage with you, and I know full well that no penance will seem
overhard to you."

"No, no, of a surety, Margery, no!" she replied with a groan. "And the
Chaplain said the like to me long ago; and yet I feel in my heart that
you and he are in the wrong. An oath sworn by Christ's wounds!--Moreover
I am the elder and his mother, he is the younger and my son. It is his
part to come to me, and if he then shall make a pilgrimage it shall be
to Rome and the Holy Sepulchre. He has time before him in which to do
any penance the Holy Church may require of him. I--I would lay me on the
rack only to see him once more, I would fast and scourge myself till my
dying day; but I am his mother, and he is my son, and it is his part to
take the first step, not mine who bore him."

How warmly I urged her again and again, and how often was she on the
point of yielding to her heart's loud outcry! Yet she ever came back to
the same point: that it ill-beseemed her to be the first to put forth
her hand, albeit her every feeling drove her to it.

The letters sent to Gotz had reached him through a merchant's house in
Venice. This his parents knew, and they had long since charged Kunz to
inquire where he dwelt. Yet had his pains been for nought, inasmuch as
the banished youth had forbidden the traders to tell any one, whosoever
might ask. Howbeit my uncle had implored his son in many a letter to
mind him of his mother's sickness, and come home; and in his answers
Gotz had many a time given his parents assurance of his true and loving
devotion; yet had he kept his oath, and tarried beyond seas. These
letters likewise did my aunt show me, and while I read them she charged
me to make it my duty not to quit that merchant's house and to take no
rest until I had learned where her son was dwelling: saying that what an
Italian might deny to a man a fair young maiden might yet obtain of him.

It was not yet