Page:Select Popular Tales from the German of Musaeus.djvu/74

62 The servants of the Count were in the meanwhile busy, to kindle again the extinguished fire; it seemed to them as if they heard human voices inside, whence they supposed that the Countess was still alive. But all their trouble was in vain; the wood caught as little fire as if the stove had been heated with snow-balls. Soon Count Conrad rode home, and anxiously asked how it was with his wife. The servants informed him, how they had well heated the bath, but that the fire was suddenly extinguished; and that they believed the Countess was still alive. This very much rejoiced his heart; he went to the door, and cried through the keyhole, “Dost thou live, Matilda?” and the Countess recognised her husband’s voice, and answered, “Beloved lord, I live and my children live also.” Enraptured at this speech, the impatient Count had the door broken open, because the key was not ready at hand, rushed into the bath-room to the feet of his innocent wife, bedewed her pure hands with a thousand tears of repentance, brought her and her pledges of love, to the joy and delight of the whole house, out of the frightful death-chamber back into her apartment, and heard from her mouth the whole particulars of the shameful slander, and the robbery of the children. Immediately he gave the command to seize the malicious nurse, and to shut her up in the bath-room. The fire in the stove began to burn merrily, the flames ascended on high, and speedily this devilish woman died a miserable and deserved death.