hornet had stung her. And how she looked at me! Once--I knew it
instantly--I had gazed into such a matvellously beautiful face, such
helpless blue eyes. Afterward I remembered who and where it had been.
God guard me from sinning against my own child, but that was exactly the
way the young girl looked who they--it was farther back in the past than
you can remember--burned here for a witch, as the halberdiers and monks
led her to the place of execution. Susanne Schindler--that was her name
--was the daughter of a respectable notary's clerk, who was obliged to
wander about the world a great deal, and perished in Hungary just as she
reached womanhood. Her mother had died when she was born, and an old
woman had taken care of her out of friendship. People called the lass
'beautiful Susel,' and she was wonderfully charming. Pink and white,
like the maiden in the fairy tale, and with glittering golden hair just
like my Wawerl's. The old woman with whom she lived--her aunt or some
other relative--had long practised the healing of all sorts of
infirmities, and when a young Spanish count, who had come here with the
Emperor Charles to the Reichstag in the year '31, fell under his horse in
leaping a ditch, his limbs were injured so that he could not use them.
As he did not recover under the care of the Knights of St. John, who
first nursed him, he went to the herb doctress, and she took charge of
him, and cured him, too, although the skill of the most famous doctors
and surgeons had failed to help him.

"But, to make amends, Satan, who probably had the largest share in the
miracle, visited him with the sorest evil, for 'beautiful Susel,' who was
the old woman's assistant, had so bewitched the young count that he not
only fell in love with her, but actually desired to make her his wife.

"Then all the noble relatives at home interfered. The Holy Inquisition
commanded the investigation of the case, and sent a stern vicar general