e had been for several years Melchior's
companion at school in Bologna, and had there learned to speak the sweet
Italian tongue, he could talk with Frau Blanca like one of her own
countrymen. He was a convivial person, and when he was in the tavern, or
dining with a friend, he would expatiate on how learned the doctor was in
all the secrets of nature and how well Dr. Vitali, Frau Bianca's father,
had known how to cultivate her appreciation of the good and the
beautiful. To hear her questions and her husband's tender and wise
replies was a pleasure unspeakable.

If the weather were fine the doctor would sometimes go out in the
mornings also, and then he liked best to take his young wife to the
Ueberhell garden outside the Petersthor, and show her what rare herbs and
fruit-trees his father and grandfather had planted, and Frau Bianca
amused herself by gathering the flowers, or helping her child to pick the
ripe cherries and early pears.

In Bologna she had found it difficult to entice her husband away from his
work, indeed her own father, his master, had held him back, and now she
rejoiced that in the new home he was willing to give her so many hours of
his time, moreover--he had confessed it to her--instead of the elixir,
which she had been taught from childhood to regard as the worthiest
object of research, he was seeking for a medicine that should cure her.

Autumn came, and the starlings assembled on the Thomaskirche, the storks
in the village, and the swallows on the roof of the neighbour's house to
prepare for their flight towards the south; heavy storms tore the leaves
from the trees, one dull rainy day followed another, and when at last the
mountain-ash berries and the barberries were shining in all their
brightest scarlet, the rosy flush that had been coaxed into the young
wife's cheeks during the long, dry, happy summer changed to a crimson
spot, her eyes acquired a strained, longing, mournful expression, and
after she had had an attack of coughing she would sink together as if the
autumn winds had broken her as they had the stems of the mallow which
were hanging from the trellis in the little garden outside.

Then a day came when the Court physician Olearius found his way into "The
Three Kings." It was in the middle of December and straw was strewn in
the street in front of the Ueberhell house. Those who had held aloof from
the young couple in their happy hours now drew near in their misfortune.
It seemed as