In The Blue Pike | Page 6

for any one longer
than a few weeks, though there were some whom she might easily have
induced to offer her the wedding ring.
She glanced at Kuni again, but, perceiving that the girl did not yet

vouchsafe her even a single look, she was vexed, and, moving nearer to
Cyriax, she added in a still lower tone:
"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 entered the house of the wealthy old Frau Schurstab, in order to
become estranged from a vagabond life, and recalling how once, when
he saw her sorrowful there, he had spoken kindly to her, it seemed as if
she had actually heard his own voice. As it still appeared to echo in her
ears, she suddenly became aware that the words really did proceed
from his lips. What she had heard in her dream and what now came

from his own mouth, as he stood at the door, blended into one. She
would never have believed that the power of imagination could
reproduce anything so faithfully.
Listening intently, she said to herself that, during the many thousand
times when she had talked with him in fancy, it had also seemed as if
she heard him speak. And the same experience had befallen her eyes;
for whenever memory reverted to those distant days, she had beheld
him just as he now looked standing on the threshold, where he was
detained by the landlady of The Pike. Only his face had become still
more manly, his bearing more dignified. The pleasant, winning
expression of the bearded lips remained unchanged, and more than
once she had seen his eyes sparkle with a far warmer light than now,
while he was thanking the portly woman for her cordial welcome.
While Kuni's gaze still rested upon him as if spellbound, Cyriax nudged
her, stammering hurriedly:
"They will have to pass us. Move forward, women, in front of me.
Spread out your skirt, you Redhead! It might be my death if yonder
Nuremberg fine gentleman should see me here and recollect one thing
and another."
As he spoke he dragged Kuni roughly from the window, flung the sack
which he had brought in from the cart down before him, and made
them sit on it, while he stretched himself on the floor face downward,
and pretended to be asleep behind the women.
This suited Kuni. If Lienhard Groland passed her now he could not
help seeing her, and she had no greater desire than to meet his glance
once more before her life ended. Yet she dreaded this meeting with an
intensity plainly revealed by the passionate throbbing of her heart and
the panting of her weakened lungs. There was a rushing noise in her
ears, and her eyes grew dim. Yet she was obliged to keep them wide
open- -what might not the next moment bring?
For the first time since her entrance she gazed around the large, long
apartment, which would have