At such times even the most distinguished visitors were sent home with the message that Frau Christine could not leave the sick.

The Burgrave and his wife were the only persons permitted to follow her into the hospital, and they had probably gained the privilege of speaking to her there because they were among its most liberal supporters, and three of their sons wore the cross of the Knights Hospitaller, and often spent weeks there, as the rule of the order prescribed, in nursing the sufferers.

Women also had the right to enter the hospital to be cured of the wounds inflicted by the scourge or the iron of the executioner.

Each sufferer was to be nursed there only three days, but Frau Christine took care that no one to whom such treatment might be harmful should be put out.  The Honourable Council was obliged, willing or unwilling, to defray the necessary expense.  The magistrate had many a battle to fight for these encroachments, but he always found a goodly majority on the side of the hospital and his wife.  If the number of those who required longer nursing increased too rapidly they did not spare their own fine residence.

The hospital and the hope of being allowed to help within its walls had brought Eva to Schweinau.  The experiences of the past few days had swept through the peace of her young soul like a tempest, overthrowing firmly built structures and fanning glimmering sparks to flames.  Since her quiet self-examination in the room of the city clerk, she had known what she lacked and what duty required her to become.  The bond which united her to her saint and the Saviour still remained, but she knew what was commanded by him from whom St. Clare’s mission also came, what Francis of Assisi had enjoined upon his followers whose experiences had been like hers.

They were to strive to restore peace to their perturbed souls by faithful toil for their brothers and sisters; and what toil better suited a feeble girl like herself than the alleviation of her unhappy neighbour’s suffering?  The harder the duties imposed upon her in the service of love, the better.  She would set to work in the hope of making herself the true, resolute woman which her mother, with the eyes of the soul, had seen her fragile child become; but she could imagine nothing more difficult than the tasks to be fulfilled here.  This was the real fierce heat of the forge fire to which the dead woman had wished to entrust her purification and transformation.  She would not shun, but hasten to it.  While her lover was wielding the sword she, too, had a battle to fight.  She had heard from Biberli that Heinz wished to undergo the most severe trials.  This was noble, and her enthusiastic nature, aspiring to the loftiest goal, was filled with the same desire.  Eager to learn how they would bear the test, she scanned her young shoulders and gazed at the burden which she intended to lay upon them.