“That the lofty convent walls might rise between him and the sight of me!” Kuni said to herself at this information, with a bitter smile.  On the—­other hand, her eyes filled with tears of genuine emotion and sincere shame, when she learned from the leech that Herr Lienhard Groland’s lovely wife had come daily to the convent to inquire about her, and had even honoured her couch with a visit several times.  She did not remain absent until one day, in the noble lady’s presence, Kuni, when her fever was fiercest, loaded the wearer of the wreath, whom her delirium often brought before her as a nightmare, with the most savage and blasphemous curses.  The gracious young wife was overwhelmed with horror, which had doubtless prevented her return, unless her absence was due to departure from the city.  Besides, she had committed the care of inquiring about her convalescence to an aristocratic friend in Augsburg, the wife of the learned city clerk, Doctor Peutinger, a member of the famous Welser family of Augsburg.  The latter had often inquired for her in person, until the illness of her own dear child had kept her at home.  Yet, in spite of this, her housekeeper had appeared the day before to inform the abbess that, if the injured girl should recover and wished to lead a respectable life in future, she might be sure of a welcome and easy duties in her own household.  This surely ought to be a great comfort to Kuni, the physician added; for she could no longer pursue rope-dancing, and the Peutingers were lavishly endowed with worldly goods and intellectual gifts, and, besides, were people of genuine Christian spirit.  The convent, too, would be ready to receive her—­the abbess had told him so—­if Herr Groland, of Nuremberg, kept his promise of paying her admission dues.

All these things awakened a new world of thoughts and feelings in the convalescent.  That they ought, above all, to have aroused sincere gratitude, she felt keenly, yet she could not succeed in being especially thankful.  It would be doing Lienhard a favour, she repeated to herself, if she should enter a convent, and she would rather have sought shelter in a lion’s den than under the Peutinger roof.  She had been informed the day before that the city clerk’s wife was the mother of the child upon whom she had called down misfortune and death.

The keeper of an Augsburg bath-house, who had burned herself with boiling water, occupied the next bed.  She was recovering, and was a talkative woman, whose intrusive loquacity at first annoyed Kuni, nay, when she could not silence it, caused her pain.  But her conversation soon revealed that she knew every stick and stone in her native city.  Kuni availed herself of this, and did not need to ask many questions to learn everything that she desired to know about the little beggar-landed elf.