The man who, when drunk, beat his wife till the blood came, and committed plenty of cruel deeds, trembled, wept, and could even pray with fervent piety, when—­which often happened—­the frail little creature, shaken by convulsions, seemed at the point of death.  He had undertaken the long journey to the “world’s end,” not only because the pilgrimage to Compostella promised large profits, but also to urge St. James to cure his child.  For his “sweet little Juli’s” sake, and to obtain for her a cheap nurse who would be entirely dependent upon him, he burdened himself with the lame ropedancer.  But he had no reason to repent this; Gitta had enough to do to lead him by the chain and answer the questions of the people, while Kuni nursed her charge with rare fidelity, mended the clothing of the father, mother, and child, as well or as badly as she could, and also helped Gitta with the cooking.  The sickly, obstinate little girl certainly did not deserve the name of a “sweet” child, yet Kuni devoted herself to it with warm, almost passionate affection.

The vagabond couple did not fail to notice this, and, on the whole, it pleased them.  If Cyriax was vexed when little Juli began to show plainly enough that she preferred her nurse even to him, he submitted because the lame girl watched the child through severe attacks of convulsions and fever as if it were her own, and willingly sacrificed her night’s rest for its sake.  True, he often talked loudly enough in Kuni’s presence of the witch potion which the lame girl mixed in the porridge of his child, who loved him better than anything in the world, to estrange it from him and win it to herself.

Kuni paid little heed to these offensive words; she knew that she had gained the child’s love by very different means from the “black art.”  With far more reason, she dimly felt, the sick child might have been reproached for exerting a secret spell upon her.  Her name, “Julie,” which she owed to her patron saint, Kuni supposed was the same as “Juliane.”  Besides, the daughter of the vagabond with the mutilated tongue was born a few days after the death of little Fraulein Peutinger, and this circumstance, when Kuni knew it, seemed significant.  Soon after meeting the vagrant pair she had listened to a conversation between two travelling scholars, and learned some strange things.  One believed that the old sages were right when they taught that the soul of a dead person continued its existence in other living creatures; for instance, the great Pythagoras had known positively, and proved that his own had dwelt, in former ages, in the breast of the hero Palamedes.

The ropedancer remembered this statement, questioned other Bacchantes about these things, and heard the doctrine of the transmigration of the soul confirmed.  Hence, during many a solitary ride, while the cart rolled slowly along, she pondered over the thought that Juliane’s soul had lived again in foolish Julie.  How?  Why?  She did not rack her brains on those points.  What had been a fancy, slowly became a fixed belief in the mind thus constantly dwelling upon one idea.  At last she imagined that whatever she did for Cyriax’s child benefited the soul of the little Augsburg girl, whose life had been shortened by her wicked prayer on the rope.