Gesina was not long in Rumf's employment before she planned out a regular campaign of murder. She resolved to murder her employer's wife, and thus regain her ownership of the house, in addition to becoming the mistress of his fortune, for once she was his wife she meant to dispose of him as she had Gottfried and the infatuated merchant. As for Rumf, he unconsciously became a willing party to the plot. His own wife, aged by the cares of a large family, was not exactly an exhilarating companion, and he was charmed of an evening on his return from his shop by Gesina's ready wit and her stories of fashionable persons she pretended to have known when she was better off. When Frau Rumf gave birth to a child it was Gesina who attended her, and who at night waited on Rumf, and banished his melancholia. He, too, began to cherish dangerous thoughts, and when his wife's illness took a turn for the worse, following the unexpected death of her infant, he was not nearly as distressed as he would have been had he never made the acquaintance of the widow who had "come down in the world," as she often assured him. The unfortunate wife died, and Gesina was given the charge of the five little children. Herr Rumf could not neglect his business. It was of far more importance to him than his family; and, while he observed all the conventions in mourning for his wife, he was too good a German to allow her decease to interfere with money-making. Gesina, therefore, reigned over his household; and, recalling what Gottfried had said about children being an obstacle to matrimony, she poisoned all five in the most fiendishly cruel manner. The amazing thing is that Rumf never suspected that the seven tragedies in his household were not mere accidents of fortune. He was suspected of aiding and abetting the murderess, but as he very nearly became one of her victims he was not prosecuted, especially as he actually brought her career to an end. His last child had just been interred when Herr Rumf himself had a breakdown. For some days he had found it impossible to retain food, and he was wasting away, when he ordered one of the pigs he kept to be killed and a portion of the meat cooked for him. As Gesina was then visiting some friends the meal was prepared by a servant, and to Rumf's extreme delight he found that it agreed with him. It was the first food he had eaten for a fortnight that he was able to digest.