om deserted
her; she walked thoughtfully on until she reached the neighbourhood of
Jacob Fugger's house.

A long funeral procession was moving slowly toward her. Some very exalted
and aristocratic person must be taking the journey to the grave, for it
was headed by all the clergy in the city. Choristers, in the most
elaborate dress, swinging incense holders by delicate metal chains and
bearing lanterns on long poles, surrounded the lofty cross.

Every one of distinction in Augsburg, all the children who attended
school, and all the members of the various ecclesiastical orders and
guilds in the city marched before the bier. Kuni had never seen such a
funeral procession. Perhaps the one she witnessed in Milan, when a great
nobleman was buried, was longer, but in this every individual seemed to
feel genuine grief. Even the schoolboys who, on such solemn occasions,
usually play all sorts of secret pranks, walked as mournfully as if each
had lost some relative who was specially dear to him. Among the girls
there were few whose rosy cheeks were not constantly wet with tears.

From the first Kuni had believed that she knew who was being borne to the
grave. Now she heard several women whispering near her mention the name
of Juliane Peutinger. A pale-faced gold embroiderer, who had recently
bordered a gala dress with leaves and tendrils for the dead girl's
sister, described, sobbing, the severe suffering amid which this fairest
blossom of Augsburg girlhood had withered ere death finally broke the
slender stem.

Suddenly she stopped; a cry of mingled astonishment, lamentation, and
delight, sometimes rising, sometimes falling, ran through the crowd which
had gathered along the sides of the street.

The bier was in sight.

Twelve youths bore the framework, covered with a richly embroidered blue
cloth, on which the coffin rested. It was open, and the dead girl's couch
was so high that it seemed as though the sleeper was only resting lightly
on the white silk pillow. A wreath again encircled her head, but this
time blossoming myrtles blended with the laurel in the brown curls that
lay in thick, soft locks on the snowy pillows and the lace-trimmed
shroud.

Juliane's eyes were closed. Ah! how gladly Kuni would have kissed those
long-lashed lids to win even one look of forgiveness from her whom her
curse had perhaps snatched from the green spring world!

She remembered the sunny radiance with which this sleeper's eyes had
spar