So difficult a matter was it to come by an eligible maid–of–all–work in the year 1554! These domestic perplexities will, no doubt, be to readers of her own sex, the one touch of nature that makes all the world akin. But it may seem strange to them that Mrs. Grünthler ("Domina Grünthlera," as friend N. at Schweinfurth, writing on these household matters, alone of all her other correspondents, addresses her) did not communicate with other mistresses of families on such matters, instead of always with the gentlemen. It must be remembered, however, that Olympia understood no German, and the ladies around her no Latin. Unlike her friend Francisca, John Sinapi's Italian wife, she had never thought it worth her while to acquire the language of her adopted country; betraying, one might fancy, thereby, some little pedantic affectation of classicality, the lees of the old Grecian–virgin nature. The result was, that when she wanted to speak of the price of a gown, she had to talk unintelligible stuff about "sestercium nummorum;" and when she wanted a maid, could only seek assistance from bearded doctors as classical as herself. [Sidenote: HER CHARITY.] Still, let any reader of an un–hero–worshipping turn of mind take notice, that our Olympia is no subject for quizzing of his, on the score of any such little eccentricity of the spectacled Minerva kind. A passage in the letter of N. of Schweinfurth proves,[129] that the difficulties of her ciceronian idiom did not prevent her from visiting, and with her small means comforting the misery in the poor–house at Schweinfurth, during those fearful days, when every man's thought was for himself; though she _did_ call the place a "Zenodochia." And when the "res angusta domi" was pressing her so hard, that Grünthler had to borrow money to meet the expenses of their first establishment at Heidelberg, she still found means to think of the poor she had left in miserable Schweinfurth. "If there is anyone in your neighbourhood," writes poor Grünthler to his friend the schoolmaster at Mossbach, "who could lend me twenty golden florins, I would send him a gold chain as a security, and would name a day for the repayment of the loan." Yet it is about the same time that "N." writes to say, that the poor she used to care for, had been all dispersed at the time of the sack and burning of the city, and it was impossible to know what had become of them. But he promises that the money sent shall be distributed in charity according to her wish. Yet despite small means, past losses, and domestic troubles, a happy career of usefulness and honour might still have been before Grünthler and his highly gifted wife, if only the latter had retained sufficient vital force to have rallied from the Schweinfurth miseries. But the physician had the infinite pain of seeing her fade and perish daily, amid the manifold manifestations of the high place she occupied in the esteem and regard of her contemporaries.