“And Biberli?” asked Eva, trembling with suspense.

“All honour is due the man!” cried Herr Berthold, raising his cap.  “The rods scourged his fettered limbs, his thumbs were pressed in the screws, bound to the ladder, he was dragged over the larded hare—–­”

“Oh, hush!” cried Fran Christine with uplifted hands, and her husband nodded understandingly.  Then, with a faint sigh, he added: 

“Why should I torture you with these horrors?  Nothing was spared him.  Yet the worthy fellow stuck to his statement that he had accompanied his master to your house in the full moonlight to take a somnambulist who had wandered out of the open door back to her friends.  Sir Heinz Schorlin had met Jungfrau Ortlieb only once—­at the dance in the Town Hall.  Though he had sometimes appeared before her father’s house, it was not on account of Herr Ernst’s daughters, but—­and this was an allusion to Cordula von Montfort—­for the sake of another lady.

“After the lightning had killed his master’s horse under him he had avoided every woman, because he wished to enter a monastery.  He could prove all these statements by many witnesses.  Yesterday he named them, and Count Gleichen and his retainers appeared with several others.  The Minorite Benedictus was vainly sought at the Franciscans.”

“He is here in the house of the Beguines,” replied Frau Christine, “and weak as he is, he will have strength enough to make a deposition in the knight’s favour.”

The magistrate said that this might be necessary if a new charge were brought against the servitor, Katterle, and perhaps even Sir Heinz Schorlin himself.  Rarely had he seen a bad cause maintained with so much obstinacy.  The complainants had witnesses who testified under oath what they had heard in taverns and tap-rooms from Sir Seitz Siebenburg and those who repeated his tales.  Their examination had lasted a long time, and what they alleged was as absurd as possible, yet for that very reason difficult to refute.  These depositions had aided the cause of the accused, but in consequence of such numerous charges many questions of course were put to Biberli, and thus the torture had been cruelly increased and prolonged.

Here Eva interrupted the speaker with another outburst of indignation, but he only shrugged his shoulders pityingly, saying:  “Gently, child!  A shoemaker who recently upbraided the ‘Honourables’ for something similar was publicly scourged, and if cruelties have been practised here it is the fault of the law, not of the judges.  But worse yet may come, if the pack is not silenced by a higher will.”

“The Emperor?” asked the girl with quivering lips.

“Yes, child,” was the reply, “and your old godfather had thought of bringing this evil cause before our royal master.  He gladly exercises mercy, but only after carefully investigating the pros and cons.  In this case there is but one person in whom he has full confidence, and who is also in a position to tell him the exact truth.”