"And the poor innocent girl in the Ortlieb house! Your little lady,
my lord, broke the bread she must now eat herself, but the other, the
older E."

"I know," interrupted the knight sorrowfully. "But if the gracious
Virgin aids us, they will continue to believe in the wager Cordula von
Montfort----"

"She! she!" Biberli exclaimed, enthusiastically waving his stick aloft.
"The Lord created her in a good hour. Such a heart! Such friendly
kindness! And to think that she interposed so graciously for you--you,
Sir Heinz, to whom she showed the favour of combing your locks, as if
you were already her promised husband, and who afterwards, for another's
sake, left her at the ball as if she wore a fern cap and had become
invisible. I saw the whole from the musician's gallery. True, the
somnambulist is marvellously beautiful."

But the knight interrupted him by exclaiming so vehemently: "Silence!"
that he paused.

Both walked on without speaking for some distance ere Heinz began again:

"Even though I live to grow old and grey, never shall I behold aught more
beautiful than the vision of that white-robed girlish figure on the
stairs."

True and steadfast Biberli sighed faintly. Love for Eva Ortlieb held his
master as if in a vise; but a Schorlin seemed to him far too good a match
for a Nuremberg maiden who had grown up among sacks of pepper and chests