ho had
spent many and many a night by the death-bed of a man she had loved, and
who, tender-hearted, had often tended her sick slaves with her own hand,
looked compassionately into the pretty, pain-stricken face of the child,
and wiped the dews from his clammy brow.

Katharina shuddered; but her attention was presently attracted to
something fresh; from the other side of the house came a clatter of
weapons, the door was pushed open, and the physician Philippus walked
into the room. He desired the night-watch, who were with him, to wait
outside. He had come by the command of the police authorities, to whose
ears information had been brought that there were persons sick of the
plague in the house of Medea, and that she, nevertheless, continued to
receive visitors. It had long been decided that she must be taken in the
act of sorcery, and warning had that day been given that she expected
illustrious company in the evening. The watch were to find her
red-handed, so to speak; the leech was to prove whether her house was
indeed plague-stricken; and in either case the senate wished to have the
sorceress safe in prison and at their mercy, though even Philippus had
not been taken into their confidence.

The visitors he had come upon were the last he had expected to find here.
He looked at them with a disapproving shake of the head, interrupted the
woman's voluble asseverations that these noble ladies had come, out of
Christian charity, to comfort and help the sick, with a rough
exclamation: "A pack of lies!" and at once led the coerced sick nurses
out of the house. He then represented to them the fearful risk to which
their folly had exposed them, and insisted very positively on their
returning home and, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, taking a
bath and putting on fresh garments.

With trembling knees they found their way back to the chariot; but even
before it could start Heliodora had broken down in tears, while
Katharina, throwing herself back on the cushions, thought, as she glanced
at her weeping companion: "This is the beginning of the wonderful
happiness she was promised! It is to be hoped it may continue!"

It seemed indeed as though Katharina's guardian spirit had overheard this
amiable wish; for, as the chariot drove past the guard-house into the
court-yard of the governor's house, it was stopped by armed men with
brown, warlike faces, and they had to wait some minutes till an Arab
officer appeared to enq