The dealer in the indulgences, too, had not yet gone to rest.  A tall, broad-shouldered sergeant belonging to the escort had just purchased—­ for the larger part of the zecchins won as his share of the booty in the Italian war—­the indulgence which he thought would secure him from the tortures of the fire of purgatory.  Before opening the door, he struck his broad breast as though relieved of a heavy burden.

The ropedancer looked after him thoughtfully.  The paper had now lightened the sergeant’s heart as it had formerly done her own.  Would she not have been wiser to give her money for the redemption of Nickel’s lost soul than for the orphans, whom the charity of the people would perhaps have succoured without her?  Probably, too, it would have afforded still greater consolation to the poor dying woman, whom nothing troubled so sorely as her guilt for the doom of her unfortunate husband.

Yet, even thus she had succeeded in making the dying mother’s departure easier, and what she had commenced she intended to complete at once.

With a tender smile that lent strange beauty to her pallid, grief-worn face she continued her survey.

She had previously noticed an old priest, whose countenance bore the impress of genuine kindness of heart.  She soon found him again among the travellers sleeping on the straw; but the old man’s slumber was so sound that she felt reluctant to wake him.  Among the Dominicans from Cologne, most of whom were also asleep, there were none she would have trusted, nay, she even thought that one was the very person who, shortly before her fall from the rope, had pursued her with persistent importunity.  But the Abbot of St. AEgidius in Nuremberg, who had dined with the ambassadors from his native city, was also a man of benevolent, winning expression.  His cheeks were flushed, either by the heat or the wine which he had drunk, but there was a look of attractive kindness upon his well-formed features.  When he went through the room a short time before, Kuni had seen him pass his hand caressingly over the fair hair of the pretty little son of a potter’s wife from Reren on the Rhine, whose cart was standing outside in the meadow by the Main.  He was scarcely of the same mind as the gentleman from Cologne, for he had just waved his plump hand in protest.

Perhaps she might even do him a favour by summoning him.  But dared she, a poor vagabond, disturb so distinguished a gentleman at his wine?

Yet there was danger in delay.  So she resolved to ask the assistance of the landlady of The Pike, coughed with her handkerchief pressed over her lips, in order not to disturb the sleepers, and turned to leave the room.

But Gitta had just been to see the sick mother, and told Cyriax that Kuni, silly, softhearted thing, had wasted her gold coins on the dying woman.

The blasphemer flew into a great rage, muttered a few words to pock-marked Ratz, and then staggered toward their lame travelling companion to bar her passage across the threshold, and ask, in angry, guttural tones, how much of the Groland gold she had flung into the dying woman’s grave.