To despatch a good Christian to such an unclean hole!
No images of the Virgin and the saints, no crucifix nor anything else that elevates a human soul in the whole dwelling, but the portrait of the anti-Christ, the arch-heretic Luther, in the best place in the room! However he turned his eyes away, the fat heretic face had forced him to look at it. Meanwhile he had felt as if the devil himself was already stretching out his arm from the ample sleeve to seize him by the collar.
“B-r-r-r!” he repeated, and hurried off to Saint Leonhard’s chapel in the Golden Cross, where he sprinkled himself eagerly with holy water, and then sought Master Adrian. But the valet was with the Emperor, and so he went to his master and told him where he had unexpectedly wandered.
The latter lent a willing ear and shook his sagacious head indignantly when he learned that, besides Sir Wolf Hartschwert, Cassian had also met “the singer” at the house of the syndic, the soul of the evangelical movement in Ratisbon.
Meanwhile Barbara was taking leave of the friend of her youth at the Hiltner house.
The others, with the exception of the deaf old dame, had considerately left the room.
Wolf felt it gratefully, for a dark suspicion, which Barbara’s information of her father’s long ride as a messenger only confirmed, weighed heavily upon his heart.
The man for whose sake the woman he loved had given him up must be Baron Malfalconnet.
It was well known how recklessly this gay, gallant noble trifled with women’s hearts, and he had mentioned Barbara in his presence in a way that justified the conjecture.
Therefore, ere Wolf clasped her hand, he told her the suspicions which filled him with anxiety about her.