oubling themselves about
the boisterous merriment of the burghers or the transformation of the
room into a sleeping apartment, were still sitting at the table talking
together eagerly.

The dealer in the indulgences, too, had not yet gone to rest. A
tall, broad-shouldered sergeant belonging to the escort had just
purchased--for the larger part of the zecchins won as his share of the
booty in the Italian war--the indulgence which he thought would secure
him from the tortures of the fire of purgatory. Before opening the door,
he struck his broad breast as though relieved of a heavy burden.

The ropedancer looked after him thoughtfully. The paper had now
lightened the sergeant's heart as it had formerly done her own. Would
she not have been wiser to give her money for the redemption of Nickel's
lost soul than for the orphans, whom the charity of the people would
perhaps have succoured without her? Probably, too, it would have
afforded still greater consolation to the poor dying woman, whom nothing
troubled so sorely as her guilt for the doom of her unfortunate husband.

Yet, even thus she had succeeded in making the dying mother's departure
easier, and what she had commenced she intended to complete at once.

With a tender smile that lent strange beauty to her pallid, grief-worn
face she continued her survey.

She had previously noticed an old priest, whose countenance bore the
impress of genuine kindness of heart. She soon found him again among the
travellers sleeping on the straw; but the old man's slumber was so sound
that she felt reluctant to wake him. Among the Dominicans from Cologne,
most of whom were also asleep, there were none she would have trusted,
nay, she even thought that one was the very person who, shortly before
her fall from the rope, had pursued her with persistent importunity.
But the Abbot of St. AEgidius in Nuremberg, who had dined with the
ambassadors from his native city, was also a man of benevolent, winning
expression. His cheeks were flushed, either by the heat or the wine
which he had drunk, but there was a look of attractive kindness upon his
well-formed features. When he went through the room a short time before,
Kuni had seen him pass his hand caressingly over the fair hair of the
pretty little son of a potter's wife from Reren on the Rhine, whose cart
was standing outside in the meadow by the Main. He was scarcely of the
same mind as the gentleman from Cologne, for he had just waved hi