“No, no, of a surety, Margery, no!” she replied with a groan.  “And the Chaplain said the like to me long ago; and yet I feel in my heart that you and he are in the wrong.  An oath sworn by Christ’s wounds!—­Moreover I am the elder and his mother, he is the younger and my son.  It is his part to come to me, and if he then shall make a pilgrimage it shall be to Rome and the Holy Sepulchre.  He has time before him in which to do any penance the Holy Church may require of him.  I—­I would lay me on the rack only to see him once more, I would fast and scourge myself till my dying day; but I am his mother, and he is my son, and it is his part to take the first step, not mine who bore him.”

How warmly I urged her again and again, and how often was she on the point of yielding to her heart’s loud outcry!  Yet she ever came back to the same point:  that it ill-beseemed her to be the first to put forth her hand, albeit her every feeling drove her to it.

The letters sent to Gotz had reached him through a merchant’s house in Venice.  This his parents knew, and they had long since charged Kunz to inquire where he dwelt.  Yet had his pains been for nought, inasmuch as the banished youth had forbidden the traders to tell any one, whosoever might ask.  Howbeit my uncle had implored his son in many a letter to mind him of his mother’s sickness, and come home; and in his answers Gotz had many a time given his parents assurance of his true and loving devotion; yet had he kept his oath, and tarried beyond seas.  These letters likewise did my aunt show me, and while I read them she charged me to make it my duty not to quit that merchant’s house and to take no rest until I had learned where her son was dwelling:  saying that what an Italian might deny to a man a fair young maiden might yet obtain of him.

It was not yet dusk when Master Ulsenius came and broke off our discourse.  He had come forth in part to see Eppelein, and presently, when a lamp was brought, as we stood by the faithful lad he called me by name, and then Uncle Conrad, and said that albeit he was weary of limb he was easy and comfortable; that he felt a smart now and then, and in especial about his neck, yet that troubled him but little, inasmuch as that it plainly showed him that the thought which had haunted him, that he was really killed and in a darksome hell, was but a horrible dream.

Then when he had spoken thus much, with great pains, his pale face turned red on a sudden, and again he asked, as he had many times in his sickness, where was his master’s letter.  Hereupon I hastily told him that we had hunted down the robbers and rescued it, and it was a joy to see how much comfort and delight this was to him.  And when he had swallowed a good cup of strong Malvoisie, he could sit up, and enquired if the Baron von Im Hoff were minded to satisfy the Sultan’s over-great demand.  And to this I replied, to give him easement, that we had good reason to hope so.  And was his mind now clear enough to enable him to remember how great a sum was demanded for ransom?