"A more inconstant, faithless, colder heart than hers I never met, even
among the most disorderly of Loni's band; for, blindly as the infatuated
lovers obeyed every one of her crazy whims, she laughed at the best and
truest. 'I hate them all,' she would say. 'I wouldn't let one of them
even touch me with the tip of his finger if I could not use their
zecchins. 'With these,' she said, 'she would help the rich to restore to
the poor what they had stolen from them.' She really treated many a
worthy gentleman like a dog, nay, a great deal worse; for she was tender
enough to all the animals that travelled with the company; the poodles
and the ponies, nay, even the parrots and the doves. She would play with
the children, too, even the smallest ones--isn't that so, Peperle?--like
their own silly mothers." She smoothed the blind boy's golden hair as she
spoke, then added, sighing:

"But the little fellow was too young to remember it. The rattle which she
gave him at Augsburg--it was just before the accident--because she was so
fond of him--Saint Kunigunde, how could we keep such worthless jewels in
our sore need?--was made of pure silver. True, the simpletons who were so
madly in love with her, and with whom she played so cruelly, would have
believed her capable of anything sooner than such kindness. There was a
Swabian knight, a young fellow----"

Here she stopped, for Cyriax and the other vagabonds, even the girl of
whom she was speaking, had started up and were gazing at the door.

Kuni opened her eyes as wide as if a miracle had happened, and the
crimson spots on her sunken cheeks betrayed how deeply she was agitated.
But she had never experienced anything of this kind; for while thinking
of the time when, through Lienhard Groland's intercession, she had