penance the Holy Church may require of him. I--I would lay me on the
rack only to see him once more, I would fast and scourge myself till my
dying day; but I am his mother, and he is my son, and it is his part to
take the first step, not mine who bore him."

How warmly I urged her again and again, and how often was she on the
point of yielding to her heart's loud outcry! Yet she ever came back to
the same point: that it ill-beseemed her to be the first to put forth her
hand, albeit her every feeling drove her to it.

The letters sent to Gotz had reached him through a merchant's house in
Venice. This his parents knew, and they had long since charged Kunz to
inquire where he dwelt. Yet had his pains been for nought, inasmuch as
the banished youth had forbidden the traders to tell any one, whosoever
might ask. Howbeit my uncle had implored his son in many a letter to
mind him of his mother's sickness, and come home; and in his answers
Gotz had many a time given his parents assurance of his true and loving
devotion; yet had he kept his oath, and tarried beyond seas. These
letters likewise did my aunt show me, and while I read them she charged
me to make it my duty not to quit that merchant's house and to take no
rest until I had learned where her son was dwelling: saying that what an
Italian might deny to a man a fair young maiden might yet obtain of him.

It was not yet dusk when Master Ulsenius came and broke off our
discourse. He had come forth in part to see Eppelein, and presently,
when a lamp was brought, as we stood by the faithful lad he called me by
name, and then Uncle Conrad, and said that albeit he was weary of limb he
was easy and comfortable; that he felt a smart now and then, and in
especial about his neck, yet that troubled him but little, inasmuch as
that it plainly showed him that the thought which had haunted him, that