hed heartily, and lame Jungel, chuckling, rapped on the floor
with his right crutch, exclaiming:

"Good for you!"

Kuni was accustomed to such outbursts of merriment. They were almost
always awakened by some trifle, and this time she did not even hear the
laughing. But Cyriax struck his wife so rudely on the hand that she
jerked furiously at the chain and, with a muttered oath, blew on the
bruised spot. Meanwhile Gundel was telling the group how many
distinguished gentlemen had formerly paid court to Kuni. She was as agile
as a squirrel. Her pretty little face, with its sparkling blue eyes,
attracted the men as bacon draws mice. Then, pleased to have listeners,
she related how the girl had lured florins and zecchins from the purse of
many a wealthy ecclesiastic. She might have been as rich as the Fuggers
if she hadn't met with the accident and had understood how to keep what
she earned. But she could not hold on to her gold. She had flung it away
like useless rubbish. So long as she possessed anything there had been no
want in Loni's company. She, Gundel, had caught her arm more than once
when she was going to fling Hungarian ducats, instead of coppers, to
good-for-nothing beggars. She had often urged her, too, to think of old
age, but Kuni--never cared for any one longer than a few weeks, though
there were some whom she might easily have induced to offer her the
wedding ring.

She glanced at Kuni again, but, perceiving that the girl did not yet
vouchsafe her even a single look, she was vexed, and, moving nearer to
Cyriax, she added in a still lower tone:

"A more inconstant, faithless, colder heart than hers I never met, even
among the most disorderly of Loni's band; for, blindly as the infatuated
lovers obeyed every one of her crazy whims, she laughed at the best and
truest. 'I hate them all,' she would say. 'I wouldn't let one of them
even touch me with the tip of his finger if I could not use their
zecchins. 'With these,' she said, 'she would help the rich to restore to
the poor what they had stolen from them.' She really treated many a
worthy gentleman like a dog, nay, a great deal worse; for she was tender
enough to all the animals that travelled with the company; the poodles
and the ponies, nay, even the parrots and the doves. She would play with
the children, too, even the smallest ones--isn't that so, Peperle?--like
their own silly mothers." She smoothed the blind boy's golden hair as she
spoke, then added,