d
Speyer cathedral at the hour of Vespers on the day on which Lydia was
rescued, might have seen a young man clothed in black kneeling in the
most abject manner before one of the confessional boxes most concealed
in the gloom. His confession was at an end and the priest was earnestly
addressing him. A woman kneeling close by heard the words: "Only a long
discipline, my Son, can restore the equilibrium and order of thy
disturbed conscience." From that time onwards for several weeks the
same stranger might be noticed entering the cathedral daily at daybreak
and at sundown and going down to the dark crypt under the chancel.
Thence he disappeared in a side chapel set aside for the use of the
clergy of the chapter. "Where can Laurenzano be spending his holiday?"
asked the philosopher Pithopoeus at the round table in the Hirsch, who
loved a rational audience.

"His brother says," replied Erastus, "that he is in Speyer, but I have
not been able to hear a word about him from gentlemen who are there in
the Kurfuerst's suite, although I made all due inquiries."

"Very probably," answered Pithopoeus, who liked Laurenzano for the
interest he felt in scholastic discussions. "In the bustle which now
goes on in that town, an individual is easily lost."

CHAPTER II.

When Klytia was sufficiently restored to health to be able to sit up
with outstretched foot on a chair specially constructed by her father,
the visits of her friends who where most anxious to hear all the
details of the accident began, thereby greatly tormenting the poor
child. Frau Belier especially wished to know so exactly how it all came
to pass that finally nothing was left for Lydia but to avail herself of
Barbara's device of the open turnip-pit. Happily private affairs
remained still uppermost in the minds of these busy women and maidens,
and Lydia was endued with sufficient feminine cunning to parry a
disagreeable question by referring to another topic. "I am nothing but
a false serpent," she used to say reproachfully to herself, "and repay
all this love with deceit." She received more visits than she cared
for,--only one remained away, one whom she so much feared, one for whom
she so much longed. What could have prevented Paolo from coming to the
very place chosen by himself? What prevented him even now from at all
events asking her father about the health of his pupil? Had the miller
not confirmed the fact that the note h