wound for its sake. I don't mean these
pitiful burns, but a deep and deadly one."

"You ought to have spared yourself these," said Els in a tone of
affectionate warning. "Consider what you are to your father, and how
your suffering pains him! To risk a precious human life for the sake of
a stupid brute--"

"They call it a sin, I know," Cordula burst forth. "And yet I would
commit 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 mou