it the same tomorrow at the risk of again--Oh, you cautious city
people, you maidens with snow-white hands! What do you know of a girl
like me? You cannot even imagine what my child life was; and yet it is
told in a single word--motherless! I was never permitted to see her, to
hear her dear, warning voice. She paid with her own life for giving me
mine. My father? How kind he is! He meant to supply his dead wife's place
by anticipating my every wish. Had I desired to feast my eyes on the
castle in flames, it would, perhaps, now lie in ashes. So I became what I
am. True--and this is something--I grew to be at least one person's
joy--his. No, no, at home there are others also, though they dwell in
wretched hovels, who would gladly welcome me back. But except these, who
will ask about the reckless countess? I myself do not care to linger long
when the mirror shows me my image. Do you wish to know what this has to
do with the fire? Much; for otherwise I should scarcely have been
wounded. The lightning had struck only the convent barn; the cow stable,
when we arrived, was still safe, but the flames soon reached it also.
Neither the nuns nor the men had thought of driving the cattle out. Poor
city cattle! In the country the animals have more friendly care. When the
work of rescue was at last commenced the cows naturally refused to leave
their old home. Some prudent person had torn the door off the hinges that
they might not stifle. Just in front of it stood a pretty red cow with a
white star on her face. A calf was by her side, and the mother had
already sunk on her knees and was licking it in mortal terror. I pitied
the poor thing, and as Boemund Altrosen, the black-haired knight who
entered your house with the rest after the ride to Kadolzburg, had just
come there, I told him to save the calf. Of course he obeyed my wish, and
as it struggled he dragged it out of the stable with his strong arms. The
building was already blazing, and the thatched roof threatened to fall
in. Just at that moment the old cow looked at me so piteously and uttered
such a mournful bellow that it touched me to the heart. My eyes rested on
the calf, and a voice within whispered that it would be motherless, like
me, and miss during the first part of its life God's best gift. But
since, as you have heard, I act before I think, I went myself--I no
longer know how--into the burning stable. It was hard to breathe in the
dense smoke, and fiery sparks scorched