With stern decision he therefore insisted upon demanding the entire sum in her possession.  He could only do it so cheaply because her face and her lost foot showed that she was destined to suffer part of the eternal torture here on earth.

Then Kuni yielded.  The paper was made out in the name of Juliane, she gave up her little store, and returned to the inn a penniless beggar, but with a lighter heart, carrying the precious paper under the handkerchief crossed over her bosom.  But there the carrier refused her a seat without the money which she had promised him, and the landlord demanded payment for her night’s lodging and the bit of food she had eaten.

Should she go back to the convent and ask for the little sum which Lienhard had left there for her?

The struggle was a hard one, but pride finally conquered.  She renounced the kindly meant gift of her only friend.  When the abbess returned the money to him, he could not help perceiving that she was no beggar and scorned to be his debtor.  If he then asked himself why, he would find the right answer.  She did not confess it to herself in plain words, but she wished to remain conscious that, whether he desired it or not, she had given her heart’s best love to this one man without reward, merely because it was her pleasure to do it.  At last she remembered that she still possessed something valuable.  She had not thought of it before, because it had been as much a part of herself as her eyes or her lips, and it would have seemed utterly impossible to part with it.  This article was a tolerably heavy gold ring, with a sparkling ruby in the centre.  She had drawn it from her father’s finger after he had taken his last leap and she was called to his corpse.  She did not even know whether he had received the circlet as a wedding ring from the mother of whom she had no remembrance, or where he obtained it.  But she had heard that it was of considerable value, and when she set off to sell the jewel, she did not find it very hard to gave it up.  It seemed as if her father, from the grave, was providing his poor child with the means she needed to continue to support her life.

She had heard in the convent of Graslin, the goldsmith, who had bestowed on the chapel a silver shrine for the relics, and went to him.

When she stood before the handsome gableroofed house which he occupied she shrank back a little.  At first he received her sternly and repellantly enough, but, as soon as she introduced herself as the ropedancer who had met with the accident, he showed himself to be a kindly old gentleman.

After one of the city soldiers had said that she told the truth and had just been dismissed from the convent, he paid her the full value of the ring and added a florin out of sympathy and the admiration he felt for the charm which still dwelt in her sparkling blue eyes.