The young Augsburg maiden, whom she thought she had bought out of the flames of purgatory, did not appear to her again, but the vagrant’s child came all the more frequently, and whenever she showed herself she wailed and wept bitterly.  Sweet little Juli’s soul must now—­whether it had been Juliane’s or not—­endure the tortures of purgatory, and this pierced Kuni’s heart the more deeply the more affectionately she remembered the sickly-child.

Ever since she had used a black plaster, given to her at Singen by a quack, the stump of her foot had become sore again, and sharp pain tortured her so cruelly that, especially when the cough racked her emaciated body and she was jolted to and fro in the springless cart over stony roads, she was afraid that she should lose her reason.

At Pforzheim a barber had examined the wound and, shaking his head, pronounced the black plaster a malignant blood poisoner, and when she refused to have the leg amputated, applied a yellow one, which proved no better.  When Cyriax counted up his receipts in the evening, called to red-haired Gitta his favourite maxim, “Fools never die,” and handed to her—­Kuni—­the larger brandy bottle to fill, she had often summoned up her courage and begged him to buy an indulgence for his sweet little Juli.  The result was certain—­she knew it from her own experience.

Shortly after the child’s death he had thrust his hand into his purse more than once at such an appeal and given money for a few candles, but it had not been possible to persuade him to purchase the paper.

This refusal was by no means due to mere parsimony.  Kuni knew what induced him to maintain his resistance so obstinately, for in her presence he had told pock-marked Ratz that he would not take the indulgence gratis.  Wherever he might be, his family ought to go, and he did not wish to be anywhere that he would not find Juli.

He did not doubt the continued life of the soul after death, but precisely because he was sure that the gates of paradise would remain closed to him throughout eternity he would not help to open them for the dead child.  When his imagination tortured him with fancies that mice and beetles were leaping and running out of his pockets and the breast of his doublet, he thought that his end was drawing near.  If the devil then had power over his soul, his imps might drag him wherever they pleased, if only he might see little Juli there and hear her call “Baba” and “Father.”  It would lessen the tortures of hell, however severe they might be.  Was it possible for him to conceive of any greater folly than to rob himself of this consolation by transporting the child, through the indulgence, to the kingdom of heaven, where he could never see her again.  He had accumulated a goodly sum by begging, it is true, but, strangely enough, he did not think of purchasing salvation for himself in order to meet his child again in heaven, instead of amid the flames of purgatory.  Though he had become as rich as the Fuggers, paradise, he knew, would still be closed to him.  He was not fit for it.