The struggle was a hard one, but pride finally conquered.  She renounced the kindly meant gift of her only friend.  When the abbess returned the money to him, he could not help perceiving that she was no beggar and scorned to be his debtor.  If he then asked himself why, he would find the right answer.  She did not confess it to herself in plain words, but she wished to remain conscious that, whether he desired it or not, she had given her heart’s best love to this one man without reward, merely because it was her pleasure to do it.  At last she remembered that she still possessed something valuable.  She had not thought of it before, because it had been as much a part of herself as her eyes or her lips, and it would have seemed utterly impossible to part with it.  This article was a tolerably heavy gold ring, with a sparkling ruby in the centre.  She had drawn it from her father’s finger after he had taken his last leap and she was called to his corpse.  She did not even know whether he had received the circlet as a wedding ring from the mother of whom she had no remembrance, or where he obtained it.  But she had heard that it was of considerable value, and when she set off to sell the jewel, she did not find it very hard to gave it up.  It seemed as if her father, from the grave, was providing his poor child with the means she needed to continue to support her life.

She had heard in the convent of Graslin, the goldsmith, who had bestowed on the chapel a silver shrine for the relics, and went to him.

When she stood before the handsome gableroofed house which he occupied she shrank back a little.  At first he received her sternly and repellantly enough, but, as soon as she introduced herself as the ropedancer who had met with the accident, he showed himself to be a kindly old gentleman.

After one of the city soldiers had said that she told the truth and had just been dismissed from the convent, he paid her the full value of the ring and added a florin out of sympathy and the admiration he felt for the charm which still dwelt in her sparkling blue eyes.

But Compostella was indeed far away.  Her new supply of money was sufficient for the journey there, but how could she return?  Besides, her cough troubled her very seriously, and it seemed as though she could not travel that long distance alone.  The dealer in indulgences had said that the paper made the pilgrimage unnecessary, and the confessor in the convent had only commanded her to go to Altotting.  With this neighbouring goal before her, she turned her back upon Augsburg the following morning.

Her hope of meeting on the way compassionate people, who would give her a seat in their vehicles, was fulfilled.  She reached Altotting sooner than she had expected.  During the journey, sometimes in a peasant’s cart, sometimes in a freight wagon, she had thought often of little Juliane, and always with a quiet, nay, a contented heart.  In the famous old church, at the end of her pilgrimage, she saw a picture in which the raked souls of children were soaring upward to heaven from the flames blazing around them in purgatory.