Page:Legends of Rubezahl, and Other Tales (1845).djvu/268

 his heart, was exceedingly exhilarating and satisfactory; but that people should suggest she had undone his pocket, was shocking, intolerable; so she resolved to divest herself of these ill-acquired riches, and that in such a way as should at once flatter her personal vanity and place her credit high in an influential quarter. She founded a convent for girls of noble family on the Rammelsberg, not far from Goslar, and endowed it as richly as Madame de Maintenon did her ghostly Elysium, St Cyr, in like manner with other people’s money. Such a monument of devotion was at that period quite enough to invest anybody with the odour of sanctity, and to disperse from before the eyes and memory of the world far greater sins than Lucretia had been guilty of. She forthwith was cited as a perfect model of all the virtues; even the Empress was disposed to pardon her, when she saw how good a use she made of the wealth she had acquired from the Count. In order in some small degree to indemnify the poor man, she obtained for him from the Emperor an order of sustenance on a rich monastery, which she designed to send him as soon as she could discover the place of his retreat.

Meantime the Count himself pursued his despairing way o’er hill and dale, now forswearing for aye deceitful love, now half resolved to return and once more gaze on the beautiful form that so enslaved