She had left her business to buy an indulgence for her own sins, and to purchase for the soul of her husband—­whose death-bed confession, it is true, had been a long one—­for the last time, but for many centuries at once, redemption from the fires of purgatory.  The Dominican friar Tetzel, from Nuremberg, was here with his coffer, and carried written promises which secured certain remission of punishment for all sins, even those committed long ago, or to be committed in the future.  The woman had experienced the power of his papers herself.  Tetzel had come to Augsburg about a year after her husband’s death, and, as she knew how many sins he had committed, she put her hand into her purse to free him from the flames.  They must have burned very fiercely; for, while awake at night and in her dreams, she had often heard him wailing and complaining piteously.  But after she bought the paper he became quiet and, on the third night, she saw him with her own eyes enter the room, and heard him promise her a great happiness in return for her faithful remembrance.

The very next Sunday, Veit Haselnuss, the bath-house proprietor, a well-to-do man who owned another house besides the one where he lived, invited her to take a walk with him.  She knew instantly that her late husband was beginning to pay his debt of gratitude with this visitor and, in fact, a short time after, the worthy man asked her to be his wife, though she had three little children, and his oldest daughter by his first wife was already able to look after the housekeeping.  The wedding took place on Whitsunday, and she owed this great happiness entirely to the dispensation which had released the dead man’s soul from the fires of purgatory and induced him to show his thankfulness.

Kuni listened to her companion’s rapid flood of talk, until she herself enjoined silence to hear the black-robed priest who stood beside the coffer.

He was just urging his hearers, in a loud voice, to abandon the base avarice which gathers pence.  There was still time to gain, in exchange for dead florins, living salvation.

Let those who repented sin listen, and they would hear the voices of wailing parents, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, and children, who had preceded them to the other world.  Whose heart was so utterly turned to stone, whose parsimony, spite of all his love of money, was so strong that he would allow these tortured souls to burn and suffer in the flames, when it was in his power, by putting his hand into his purse, to buy a dispensation which would as surely redeem them from the fires of purgatory as his Imperial Majesty’s pardon would release an imprisoned thief from jail?

Scales seemed to fall from Kuni’s eyes.  She hastily forced her way to the Dominican, who was just wiping the perspiration from his brow with the hem of the white robe under his black cowl.