In the convent she had reached the conviction that it would be degrading to think longer of the man who, in return for the most ardent love, offered nothing but alms in jingling coin; yet her poor heart would not cease its yearning.

Meanwhile she never wearied of seeking motives that would place his conduct in a more favourable light.  Whatever he might have withheld from her, he was nevertheless the best and noblest of men, and as she limped aimlessly on, the conviction strengthened that the mere sight of him would dispel the mists which, on this sunny spring day, seemed to veil everything around and within her.

But he remained absent, and suddenly it seemed more disgraceful to seek him than to stand in the stocks.

Yet the pilgrimage to Compostella, of which the confessor had spoken?  For the very reason that it had been described to her as unattainable, it would perhaps be rated at a high value in heaven, and restore to her while on earth the peace she had lost.

She pondered over this thought on her way to the tavern, where she found a corner to sleep, and a carrier who, on the day after the morrow, would take her to the sea for a heller pound.  Other pilgrims had also engaged passage at Antwerp for Corunna, the harbour of Compostella, and her means were sufficient for the voyage.  This assurance somewhat soothed her while she remained among people of her own calling.

But she spent a sleepless night; for again and again the dead child’s image appeared vividly before her.  Rising from the soft pillows in the coffin, she shook her finger threateningly at her, or, weeping and wailing, pointed down to the flames—­doubtless those of purgatory—­which were blazing upward around her, and had already caught the hem of her shroud.

Kuni arose soon after sunrise with a bewildered brain.  Before setting out on her pilgrimage she wished to attend mass, and—­that the Holy Virgin might be aware of her good intentions—­repeat in church some of the paternosters which her confessor had imposed.

She went out with the simple rosary that the abbess had given her upon her wrist, but when she had left the tavern behind she saw a great crowd in front of the new St. Ulrich’s Church, and recognised among the throngs of people who had flocked thither her companion in suffering at the convent, the keeper of the bath-house, who had been cured of her burns long before.

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.