As Countess Cordula, aided by the old man’s hand, swung herself from the saddle of her spirited dappled steed, he thought:  “If it were she who wanted to tend our sick rascals instead of the delicate Eva, I wouldn’t object.  She’d manage Satan himself whilst my little godchild was holding intercourse with her angels in heaven.”

In the arbour Cordula explained why she had not come before; but her account told the elderly couple nothing new.

When she went to see Ernst Ortlieb in the watch-tower that morning he had already been taken to the Town Hall.  No special proceedings were required, since he was his own accuser, and many trustworthy witnesses deposed that he had been most grossly irritated—­nay, as his advocate represented, had wounded the tailor in self-defence.  Yet Ernst Ortlieb could not be dismissed from imprisonment at once, because the tailor’s representative demanded a much larger amount of blood-money than the court was willing to grant.  The wound was not dangerous to life, but still prevented his leaving his bed and appearing in person before his judges.  The candle-dealer was nursing him in his own house and instigating him to make demands whose extravagance roused the judges’ mirth.  As after a tedious discussion Meister Seubolt still insisted upon them, the magistrates from the Council and the Chief of Police, who composed the court, advised Herr Ernst to have the sentence deferred and recognise the tailor’s claim that his case belonged to the criminal court.  Out of consideration for the citizens and the excited state of the whole guild of tailors, it seemed advisable to avoid any appearance of partiality, yet in that case the self-accuser must submit to imprisonment until the sentence was pronounced.  This delay, however, was of trivial importance; for Herr Pfinzing had promised his brother-in-law that his cause should be considered and settled on the following day.

Herr Berthold had told his wife all this soon after his return, and added, with much admiration of the valiant fellow’s steadfastness, that Biberli, Sir Heinz Schorlin’s servant, had again been subjected to an examination by torture and was racked far more severely than justice could approve.

The countess reported that after her friend’s father had been taken back to the watch-tower a few hours before, she had found him in excellent spirits.

True, the Burgrave von Zollern had not come to visit him in person, like many “Honourables” and gentlemen, but he had sent his son Eitelfritz to enquire how he fared, and the prisoner was occupied with the petition which he wished to send the sovereign the next day through Meister Gottlieb von Passau, the Emperor Rudolph’s protonotary.  He had told Cordula, with a resolute air, that it contained the charge that Sir Heinz Schorlin had found his way into his house at night, and would not even suffer her to finish her entreaty to omit the accusation.  “And now,” the countess added mournfully, “I urge you, to whom the young girl is dear, to consider the pitiable manner in which, by her own father’s folly, Eva’s name will be on the tongues of the whole court, and what the gossips throughout the city will say about the poor child in connection with such an accusation.”