"Next morning the stranger took leave of her hostess very early, and with many expressions of gratitude. Lea was so busy all day making the final preparations for the feast, that she had not time to visit the room that had been occupied by the old woman until late in the afternoon, when she was making a last round of the house to see that no leavened bread was anywhere to be found. The room was perfectly neat and tidy, but she was astonished to find it pervaded by a most disagreeable smell. She opened the window, but that had no effect. She hunted about for the cause of the horrible odor. At length, on looking under the bed, she saw what made her blood run cold and her hair stand on end with terror. For under the bed there lay the naked corpse of a half-starved little child, with great wounds in its neck and chest. Lea at once understood what had happened, and struggled hard against the faintness that threatened to overpower her. The old woman had brought the corpse to the house, and had concealed it there, in order that the hideous old story might be revived that the Jews were in the habit of killing Christian children before the feast of the Passover; and terrible would be the vengeance taken by the Christians of the neighborhood. Lea recognized the full horrors of her position, and remembered the Graf's warning to her husband. She was nearly overwhelmed with the weight of her misery. For was it not she, and she alone, who, by inducing her husband to admit the woman into the house, had brought all the sorrow, persecution, and death that would surely come upon her home and upon the whole Jewish community? While she sat there shivering with fever and anguish, she heard wild cries, shrieks, and the sound of weeping in the street, and also the clank of swords. 'They are coming,' she muttered, and at the same moment a thought flashed into her mind, far more strange and horrible than a woman's brain had ever before conceived, and yet so noble and self-sacrificing that a woman alone could have entertained it. 'It was my fault,' she said to herself, 'and I alone must bear the consequences.' She rose to her feet, pressed her lips firmly together, and after a struggle regained her composure. Then taking up the child's corpse, she wrapped it in a linen cloth and laid it on her knee.
"She listened; ... the minutes seemed to drag. Then she heard the young Graf's voice outside speaking passionately to her husband and another member of the session in these words: 'The woman heard the death-rattle distinctly. I will not leave one stone upon another if I find the body.' She heard the men going through all the rooms in the house. As their steps approached the one in which she was seated, she rose and went to the window, below which the roof fell away steeply, and overhung the paved courtyard of the house.
"The door was thrown open violently; the Graf entered, accompanied by the two members of session, and followed by his men-at-arms. Lea sprang forward to meet them with a wild laugh, showed them the child's body, and then flung it out of the window on to the court beneath....
"'I am a murderess,' she cried out to the Graf; 'yes, I am, I am. Take me, bind me, kill me! I murdered my own child last night; I don't deny it. You've come to fetch me; here I am!'
"The men stared at her in speechless amazement.
"Then came furious cries, shouts, and questions. Samuel, strong man as he was, fainted away. The other Jews, at once perceiving the true state of the case, and seeing no other way of saving the whole community from certain death, supported her in her statement. Lea remained firm. The Graf looked at her piercingly, and she returned his gaze without flinching: 'Listen, woman,' he said; 'if you have really committed the crime of which you have confessed yourself guilty, you shall die a death of torture far more terrible than any one has ever yet suffered; but if the other Jews killed the child in order to drink its blood at the feast, you and your husband shall go unpunished, and the others shall alone expiate their crime. I swear this by all that is holy! Now—choose!'
"Lea did not hesitate for a moment. 'It was my child,' she said.
"The Graf had Lea taken to prison and confined in a solitary cell. He quite saw all the improbability of her story, but he did not believe in any greatness of soul in one of our people. 'If it were not true,' he thought, 'why should the woman have given herself up?'
"The trial threw no light upon the subject.
"All the Jewish witnesses bore testimony against Lea. One told how she had hated her child; another how she had threatened to kill it. Fear of death forced these lies from their lips. The only Christian witness was the black priest's housekeeper—the same woman who had gone to Samuel's house on that fatal evening in the disguise of a peasant to bring destruction on the Jewish community. She told how she had heard the death rattle of the child during the night. She could not say more without betraying herself, and so her story tallied with Lea's confession. The 'black priest' took no apparent interest in the trial. He probably thought that one victim would suffice for the time, or it may be that he feared the discovery of his crime.