from me! I indeed tried to turn from you; and I
could have done it, even if it had cost me my heart's blood! But now and
here I ask you: Is it just that I should lay myself on the rack because
he has so cruelly hurt me? No, no. And I need your true soul to help me
to shake off the burden which is crushing me to the earth and choking me.
Help me to bear it, or I shall come to a bad end--I shall follow her who
died here in this very chamber."

My soul had ever stood open to her and so I told her right heartily, and
her face became once more as it had been of old; and albeit those things
she had to tell me were not indeed comforting, still I could in all
honesty bid her to be of good heart; and I presently felt that to
unburden herself of all that had weighed upon her these last few weeks,
did her as much good as a bath. For it still was a pain to her to see her
mother cooing like a pigeon round her new mate. She herself was full of
his praises, albeit this man, well brought up and trained to good
manners, would ever abide by the old customs of the old craftsmen, and
his venerable mother likewise held fast by them, so that his wife had
striven in vain to change the ways of the house. Thus master and
mistress, son and daughter, foreman and apprentice, sewing man and maid
all ate, as they had ever done, at the same table. And whereas the
daughters, by old custom, sat in order on the mother's side, the youngest
next to her and the oldest at the end, it thus fell that Ann was placed
next to the foreman, who was that very one who had betrayed Gotz
Waldstromer to his master because he had himself cast an eye on Gertrude.
The young fellow had ere long set his light heart on Ann; and being a
fine lad, and the sole son of a well-to-do master in Augsburg, he was
likewise a famous wooer and breaker of maiden hearts, and could boast of
many a triumphant love affair among the daughters of the simpler class.
He was, in his own rank of life, cock of the walk, as such folks say; and
I remembered well having seen him at an apprentices' dance at the May
merrymakings, whither he had come apparelled in a rose-colored jerkin and
light-hued hose, bedecked with flowers and greenery in his cap and belt;
he had fooled with the daughters of the master of his guild like the
coxcomb he was, and whirled them off to dance as though he did them high
honor by paying court to them. It might, to be sure, have given him a
lesson to find that his master's fai