perceived this to be unnecessary; for he had never found any member of
the company more zealous, or seen one make more progress in the art. Now
the only point was to keep her out of the way of other rope-dancers,
English proprietors of circus companies, as well as the numerous knights
and gentlemen who tried to take her from him. Her name had become famous.
When the crier proclaimed that the "flying maiden" would ascend the rope
to the steeple, Loni was sure of a great crowd of spectators. Among her
own profession she had obtained the nickname of crazy Kuni.

Yet even at that time, and in the midst of the freest intercourse with
German, Spanish, and other officers in Flanders and Brabant, young
knights and light-hearted priests on the Rhine, the Main, the Danube, the
Weser, and the Elbe, whose purses the pretty, vivacious girl, with the
shining raven hair and bright blue eyes, the mistress of her art, seemed
to their owners worthy to empty, she had by no means forgotten Lienhard.
This wrought mischief to many a gay gentleman of aristocratic lineage in
the great imperial and commercial cities; for it afforded Kuni special
pleasure to try her power upon Lienhard's equals in rank. When she went
on with the company, more than one patrician had good reason to remember
her with regret; for she, who shared the lion's portion of her earnings
with her companions or flung it to the poor, was insatiably avaricious
toward these admirers.

The weaker she found many of them, the higher, in her opinion, rose the
image of him who had made her feel his manly strength of resistance so
cruelly. His stern, inexorable nature seemed to her worthy of hate, yet
for three whole years the longing for him scarcely left her heart at
peace an hour.

During this whole period she had not met him. Not until after she had