ch, and recognised among the throngs
of people who had flocked thither her companion in suffering at the
convent, the keeper of the bath-house, who had been cured of her burns
long before.

She had left her business to buy an indulgence for her own sins, and to
purchase for the soul of her husband--whose death-bed confession, it is
true, had been a long one--for the last time, but for many centuries at
once, redemption from the fires of purgatory. The Dominican friar Tetzel,
from Nuremberg, was here with his coffer, and carried written promises
which secured certain remission of punishment for all sins, even those
committed long ago, or to be committed in the future. The woman had
experienced the power of his papers herself. Tetzel had come to Augsburg
about a year after her husband's death, and, as she knew how many sins he
had committed, she put her hand into her purse to free him from the
flames. They must have burned very fiercely; for, while awake at night
and in her dreams, she had often heard him wailing and complaining
piteously. But after she bought the paper he became quiet and, on the
third night, she saw him with her own eyes enter the room, and heard him
promise her a great happiness in return for her faithful remembrance.

The very next Sunday, Veit Haselnuss, the bath-house proprietor, a
well-to-do man who owned another house besides the one where he lived,
invited her to take a walk with him. She knew instantly that her late
husband was beginning to pay his debt of gratitude with this visitor and,
in fact, a short time after, the worthy man asked her to be his wife,
though she had three little children, and his oldest daughter by his
first wife was already able to look after the housekeeping. The wedding
took place on Whitsunday, and she owed this great happiness entirely to
the dispensation which had released the dead man's soul from the fires of
purgatory and induced him to show his thankfulness.

Kuni listened to her companion's rapid flood of talk, until she herself
enjoined silence to hear the black-robed priest who stood beside the
coffer.

He was just urging his hearers, in a loud voice, to abandon the base
avarice which gathers pence. There was still time to gain, in exchange
for dead florins, living salvation.

Let those who repented sin listen, and they would hear the voices of
wailing parents, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, and children, who
had preceded them to the other world. Whos