crutches. Only "Dancing Gundel" lingered in Miltenberg
through sympathy in the fate of the companion who had reached the height
of fame, while she, the former "Phyllis," had gone swiftly downhill. It
was a Christian duty, she said to the blind boy who begged their bread,
not to let Kuni, who had once held so lofty a position, take the last
journey without a suitable escort. When she heard that her former
companion had received the sacrament, she exclaimed to her blind son,
while slicing garlic into the barley porridge: "She will now be at rest.
We shall earn a pretty penny at the mass in Frankfort if you can only
manage to look as sorrowful when you hold out your hand as you do now!"

The monks, the dealer in indulgences, the burghers and artisans who were
just preparing to embark for the voyage down the Main, gazed in
bewilderment at the distinguished gentlemen who, incredible as it seemed,
had actually--for Dietel said so--foregone their morning nap for the sake
of a vagabond girl. The feather-curler shook his head as if something
marvellous had happened when he heard the ambassador of the Honourable
Council of his own native city, the distinguished Herr Lienhard Groland,
say to old Doctor Schedel:

"I will wait here with you, my venerable friend. Since the poor girl can
live only a few hours longer, I can join the others, if I hurry, before
they leave Frankfort."

"That's right, Lienhard," cried Wilibald Pirckheimer, and the Abbot of
St. AEgidius added approvingly:

"You will thereby do something which is pleasing in the sight of Heaven.
Yes, gentlemen, I repeat it: there are few deathbeds beside which I have
found so little reason to be ashamed of the fate of being a mortal as by
the humble couch of this vagabond girl. If, before the judgment seat
above, intention and faith are weighed with the same scales as works, few
who close their eyes behind silken curtains will be so sure of a
favourable sentence as this poorest of the poor."

"Did the girl really keep no portion of Herr Lienhard's rich gift for
herself?" asked the Nuremberg imperial magistrate.

"Nothing," replied the abbot. "She gave the whole, down to her last
copper, to the stranger, though she herself must remain here, poor, lame,
and deserted--and she had only met the sick woman by accident upon the
highway. My duty forbids me to repeat the details, and how she bore
herself even while at Augsburg, but, thanks to the confession which I
have just r