d forward, holding her bridegroom's
hand, she appeared to float over the rice and flowers strewn in her path
to the church--it was in February. As Kuni saw the bride raise her large
blue eyes to her lover's so tenderly and yet so modestly, and the
bridegroom thank her with a long joyous look of love, she wondered what
must be the feelings of a maiden who, so pure, so full of ardent love,
and so fervently beloved in return, was permitted to approach the house
of God, accompanied by a thousand pious wishes, with the first and only
man whom she loved, and to whom she wished to devote herself for her
whole life. Again, as at that time, a burning thrill ran through her
limbs. Then a bitter smile hovered around her lips.

She had asked herself whether the heart of one who experienced such joys,
to whom such a fate was allotted, would not burst from sheer joy. Now the
wish, the hope, and every new resolve for good or ill were alike over. At
that hour, before the door of St. Sebald's, she had been capable of all,
all, perhaps even the best things, if any one had cherished her in his
heart as Lienhard Groland loved the beautiful woman at his side.

She could not help remembering the spell with which the sight of those
two had forced her to watch their every movement, to gaze at them, and
them only, as if the world contained nothing else. How often she had
repeated to herself that in that hour she was bewitched, whether by him
or by her she could not decide. As the throng surged forward, she had
been crowded against the woman who lost the rosary. She had not had the
faintest thought of it when the bailiff suddenly snatched her from her
rapturous gazing to stern reality, seizing with a rude grip the hand that
held the jewel. Then, pursued by the reviling and hissing of the
populace, she had been taken to prison.

Now she again saw herself amid the vile rabble assembled there, again
felt how eagerly she inhaled the air as she was led across the courtyard
of the townhall into the presence of the magistrates. Oh, if she could
but take such a long, deep breath of God's pure air as she did then! But
that time was past. Her poor, sunken chest would no longer permit it.
Then she fancied that she was again standing before the judges, who were
called The Five.

Four magistrates sat with the Pfander--[Chief of police]--at the table
covered with a green cloth, but one, who surpassed all the others both in
stature and in manly beauty, was