teal from her chamber to pray when she thought him
asleep, and would wear a coarse sackcloth skirt beneath the silks that
pleased him.

One time, when Ludwig was climbing the steep path to the castle of the
Wartburg where he held his court, he met Elizabeth, who was carrying in
her dress loaves of bread for the poor people in the nearby village of
Marburg. Elizabeth always tried to perform her charity secretly, for
she believed that it would lose its value if it were widely known--and
moreover she feared that her husband would not approve of her taking a
heavy burden down the steep path into the village. When he stopped her
and gaily asked her what she had in her apron, she opened it shyly,
expecting him to blame her when he saw its contents--but how great was
her amazement as well as his when there tumbled forth upon the ground a
profusion of the sweetest smelling roses of all colors, which had
miraculously taken the place of the provisions that Elizabeth had
carried!

That was only the first of a series of miracles that those who
worshipped her memory have accredited to her lifetime, and Ludwig,
astonished and awed by what had taken place, is said to have erected a
monument at the spot where the beautiful roses appeared.

Elizabeth pitied the sick and tended them with the utmost kindness--and
she was particularly kind to the wretched sufferers from the dreadful
disease of leprosy. From earliest times the leper was an outcast from
his fellow men. They fled at his approach, and he was obliged to warn
them of his coming by outcry, or by use of a clapper or bell. But
Elizabeth went to the lepers without fear and fed and comforted them,
and even bathed their sores and bandaged them with her own hands.

At last her father, King Andrew, returned from the crusade, and on his
way back to his own dominions stopped in Thuringia to see his daughter.
By this time Elizabeth had refused to wear her splendid garments any
longer and had parted with all except her simplest dresses; and Ludwig
feared that her father the King might blame him for not maintaining
Elizabeth in the state that was her due as a royal princess, so he
inquired of Elizabeth if she had any fine dress to wear when greeting
her father. She replied that she had none, but that by grace of God
some way would be found out of the difficulty; and when she put on the
only dress that was left to her it suddenly changed by a miracle into a
gown so beautiful and lustrous