When he finally reported that he himself and the ladies must leave the house and the city, Countess Rotterbach, with a scornful glance at her deeply humiliated son-in-law, exclaimed, “This is what comes of throwing one’s self away!” The unfortunate man, already shaken to the inmost depths of his being, sank on his knees.

Conrad Teufel had instantly placed him in bed and sent for the leech; but even after they had bathed his head with cold water and bled him he did not regain consciousness.  His left side seemed completely paralysed, and his tongue could barely lisp a few unintelligible words.

At the leech’s desire a Sister of Charity had been sent for.  Isabella Siebenburg, the sufferer’s daughter, had already gone with her twin sons, in obedience to her husband’s wish, to Heideck Castle.

She had departed in anger, because she had vainly endeavoured to induce her mother and grandmother, who opposed her, to speak more kindly of her husband.  When they disparaged the absent man with cruel harshness, she felt—­she had told her cousin so—­as if the infants could understand the insult offered to their father, and, to protect the children even more than herself, from her husband’s feminine foes, she left the falling house, in spite of the entreaties and burning tears with which, in the hour of parting, her mother strove to detain her.

Ere her departure she gave her jewels and the silver which her grandfather had bequeathed to her to Conrad Teufel, to satisfy the most urgent demands of her husband’s creditors.  Her father and she had parted kindly, and he made no attempt to oppose her.

No one except the Sister of Charity was now in attendance upon the old gentleman; for his wife wept and wailed without finding strength to do anything, and even reproached her own mother, whom she accused of having plunged them all into misfortune, and caused the stroke of paralysis from which her husband was suffering.

The grey-haired countess, the cousin went on, had passed from one attack of convulsions into another, and when he approached her had shrieked the words “ingratitude” and “base reward” so shrilly at him, in various tones, that they were still ringing in his ears.

Everything in the luckless household was out of gear, and its noble guest, the Duke von Gulich, would feel the consequences, for the servants had lost their wits too.  Spite of the countless men and maids, he had been obliged to go himself to the pump to get a glass of water for the sick man, and the fragments of the vase which the grandmother had flung at him with her own noble hand were still lying on the floor.  His name was Teufel—­[devil]—­but even in his home in Hades things could scarcely be worse.

When Herr Teufel at last paused, the magistrate and his wife exchanged a significant glance, while Eva gazed with deep suspense, and Cordula with earnest pity, at Els, who had listened to the story fairly panting for breath.