"What were these cries and murmurs that I heard? Why were those threatening looks I saw? Would ye oppose a Christian act of charity due to that unhappy woman, even were she the miserable criminal she is not? Have ye yet to be taught your Christian duties in this land? God forgive me; for then _I_ have much to answer for!" After this meek self-rebuke, he again looked seriously upon the bystanders, and waved his hand to disperse the crowd, who slunk away before him; then, hastily giving orders that Magdalena should be conveyed into the palace, he himself stopped to see her borne into the garden, and followed anxiously. Every means with which the leech-craft of the times was acquainted for the recovery of the apparently drowned, was applied in the case of Magdalena, and with some success; for, after a time, breath and warmth were restored--her eyes opened. But the respiration was hurried and impeded--the eyes glazed and dim--the sense of what was passing around her, confused and troubled. A nervous tremour ran through her whole frame. She lay upon a mattrass, propped up with a pile of cushions, in a lower apartment of the palace. By her side knelt the kind Bishop of Fulda, watching with evident solicitude the variation of the symptoms in the unfortunate woman's frame. Behind her stood the stately form of the Ober-Amtmann--every muscle of his usually stern face now struggling with emotion--his hands clenched together--his head bowed down; for he had learned from his brother the Prince, that the female lying before him--the woman whom he had himself condemned to the stake, was really the mistress of his younger years--the seduced wife of the man whom he had killed--his victim, Margaret Weilheim. On the other side of the prostrate form of Magdalena bent a grave personage in dark attire, who held her wrist, and counted the beating of her pulse with an air of serious attention. In answer to an enquiring look from the Prince Bishop, the physician shook his head. "There is life, it is true," he said; "but it is ebbing fast. The fatigue and emotions of the past day were in themselves too much for a frame already shattered by macerations, and privations, and grief; this catastrophe has exhausted her last force of vitality. She cannot live long." The Ober-Amtmann wrung his hands with a still firmer gripe. The tears trembled upon the good old bishop's eyelids. "See!" said the leech; "she again opens her eyes. There is more sense in them now." The dying Magdalena in truth looked around her, as if she at length became conscious of the objects on which her vision fell. She seemed to comprehend with difficulty where she was, and how she had come into the position in which she lay. Feebly and with exertion she raised her emaciated arm, and passed her skinny hand over her brow and eyes. But at length her gaze rested upon the mild face of the benevolent bishop, and a faint smile passed over her sunken features.