Now she closed her eyes to have a clearer vision of the picture evoked by memory, which rose so vividly before her.  Again she saw herself seize his hand to kiss it humbly, yet with fervent devotion; again she met the patronizing but friendly smile with which he withdrew it, and a thrill of happiness ran through every nerve, for she imagined she once more felt his slender white hand soothingly stroke her black hair and burning cheeks, as if she were a sick child who needed help.  Later years had never granted her aught more blissful than that moment.

As had often happened before, the memory of it overmastered her with such power that she could not escape it, but recalled his every look and movement.  Meanwhile, she imagined that she heard his voice, whose deep, pure tones had pleased her ear, alive to harmony, more than any to which she had ever listened, counselling her to give up her vagrant life, and again received his assurance that he pitied her, and it would grieve him if she, who seemed worthy of a better fate, should be ruined, body and soul, so young.  Thus absorbed, she neither saw nor listened to anything that was occurring near her or in the large room of the tavern, but stood gazing into vacancy as if rapt away from earth.

True, Cyriax and the others had lowered their voices, for they were talking about her and the aristocratic couple on whose wedding day Kuni had stolen the rosary.

Raban, a tall, lank vagabond with red-rimmed eyes, whose ugly face bristled with a half-grown black beard, had a few more particulars to give concerning the bride and bridegroom.  He wandered about the world and, whenever he stretched out his hand to beg, gave the pretext that he was collecting the price of blood required for a man whom he had killed in self-defence, that his own head might not fall under the axe of the executioner.  His dead father had heated the furnaces in the smelting works at Eschenbach, near Nuremberg, and the bride was Katharina, the eldest of the three daughters of the owner, old Harsdorffer of the Council.  He had been a man of steel and iron, and opposed Lienhard Groland’s father at every point, not excepting even their official business.  When he discovered that the young man was carrying on a love affair with his daughter, he had summoned him before a court of justice for a breach of the law which forbade minors to betroth themselves without parental consent.  The magistrates sentenced Lienhard to five years’ exile from the city but, through the Emperor’s mediation, he was spared the punishment.  Old Harsdorffer afterward succeeded in keeping the suitor away from his daughter a long time, but finally relinquished his opposition.

“The devil came soon enough and broke his stiff neck,” added Cyriax, on whom the vagabond’s story had had the same effect as a red rag upon a bull.  Spite of the old slanderer’s mutilated tongue, invectives flowed fast enough from his lips when he thought of young Frau Groland’s father.  If the Groland outside resembled his father-in-law, he would like to drink him a pledge that should burn like the plague and ruin.