t
opportunity to use them, and the nurses in the city hospital, and the
leech Otto, and other physicians, as well as many noble dames in the
neighbourhood who took the place of a physician among their peasants and
dependents, applied to Fran Christine when they needed certain roots,
leaves, berries, and seeds for their sick. Nor did the monks and nuns,
far and near, ever come to her for such things in vain.

True, the life at Castle Schweinau was by no means so quiet as the one
which Eva had hitherto loved.

When she accepted the invitation she knew that, if she shared all her
aunt's occupations, she would not have even a single half hour of her
own; but this was not her first visit here, and she had learned that
Frau Christine allowed her entire liberty, and required nothing which
she did not offer of her own free will.

When she saw the matron, after the mass and the early repast which her
husband shared with her before going to the city, visit the aged widows
of the crusaders in the little institution behind the kitchen garden and
inspect and regulate the work of the Beguines, she often wondered where
this woman, whose age was nearer seventy than sixty, found strength for
all this, as well as the duties which followed. First there were orders
to give in the kitchen that the principal meal, after the vesper bells
had rung, should always win from the master of the house the "Couldn't
be better," which his wife heard with the same pleasure as ever. Then,
after visiting the wash-house, the bleachcry, the linen presses, the
cellar, the garret, and even the beehives to see that everything was
in order, and emerging from the hands of the maid as a well-dressed
noblewoman, she received visit after visit. Members of the patrician
families of Nuremberg arrived; monks and nuns on various errands for
their cloisters and their poor; gentlemen and ladies from ecclesiastical
and secular circles, in both city and country, among them frequently
the most aristocratic attendants of the Reichstag; for she numbered the
Burgrave and his wife among her friends, and when questioned about the
Nuremberg women, the Burgrave Frederick mentioned her as second to none
in ability, shrewdness, and kindness of heart.

Both he and his worthy wife sometimes sought her in the sphere of
occupation which consumed the lion's share of her time and strength--the
superintendence of the Schweinau hospital. True, she often let
days elapse without entering