“It’s a pity for every one of them!”

The knight’s blood boiled at the words, but they strengthened his courage.  He felt relieved from any consideration for these people, not one of whom, except the poor woman shedding such burning tears, had given him occasion to return love for love.  Had they flowed only for the lost wealth, and not for him and the grief he caused Isabella, they would not have seemed “a pity” to the old countess.

Siebenburg’s breath came quicker.

The gratitude he owed his father-in-law certainly did not outweigh the humiliations with which he, his weak wife, and ill-natured mother-in-law had embittered his existence.

Even now the old gentleman barely vouchsafed him a greeting.  After he had asked about his son, called himself a ruined man, and upbraided the knight with insulting harshness because his brothers—­the news had been brought to him a short time before—­were the robbers who had seized his goods, and the old countess had chimed in with the exclamation, “They are all just fit for the executioner’s block!” Seitz could restrain himself no longer; nay, it gave him actual pleasure to show these hated people what he had done, on his part, to add to their embarrassments.  He was no orator, but now resentment loosened his tongue, and with swift, scornful words he told Herr Casper that, as the son-in-law of a house which liked to represent itself as immensely rich, he had borrowed from others what—­he was justified in believing it—­had been withheld through parsimony.  Besides, his debts were small in comparison with the vast sums Herr Casper had lavished in maintaining the impoverished estates of the Rotterbach kindred.  Like every knight whose own home was not pleasant, he sometimes gambled; and when, yesterday, ill luck pursued him and he lost the estate of Tannenreuth, he sincerely regretted the disaster, but it could not be helped.

Terror and rage had sealed the old countess’s lips, but now they parted in the hoarse cry:  “You deserve the wheel and the gallows, not the honourable block!” and her daughter, Rosalinde Eysvogel, repeated in a tone of sorrowful lamentation, “Yes, the wheel and the gallows.”

A scornful laugh from Siebenburg greeted the threat, but when Herr Casper, white as death and barely able to control his voice, asked whether this incredible confession was merely intended to frighten the women, and the knight assured him of the contrary, he groaned aloud:  “Then the old house must succumb to disgraceful ruin.”

Years of life spent together may inspire and increase aversion instead of love, but they undoubtedly produce a certain community of existence.  The bitter anguish of his aged household companion, the father of his wife, to whom bonds of love still unsevered united him, touched even Seitz Siebenburg.  Besides, nothing moves the heart more quickly than the grief of a proud, stern man.  Herr Casper’s confession did not make him dearer to the knight, but it induced