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.

He hated everybody who was rich and respectable. He would rather be with
his child in the mire of hell than to go with her to a magnificent garden
of paradise where swearing was forbidden, where there was no brandy and
no highroad, and which offered only pleasures which were none to him.

So Kuni was forced to see the child remain in the fires of purgatory,
which hurt her little less than her aching limb.

At her entrance into The Blue Pike pain and mental suffering had driven
her to the verge of despair. But the day which began so sorrowfully was
followed by an evening of delight--she owed to it her new meeting with
Lienhard.

From childhood she had been homeless, and every quarter of the globe to
which a highroad led was her native land. Yet in Spain and during the
journey back she had felt a gnawing longing for Germany, nay, nothing had
troubled her more than the thought of dying and being buried outside of
its frontier. Her mother, a native of the Rhine country, had given her
birth during the fair at Cologne on the Spree; but, whenever homesickness
assailed her, it was always the steeples of St. Sebald and St. Ulrich
which beckoned to her, and she had longed for the Frank country, the