But the physician's malady was not "unto death." He recovered. As M. Bonnet writes;[116] "It required a miracle to save Grünthler.... Olympia's prayers and those of the Church of Schweinfurth were heard; and Grünthler was saved!"
Amid the horrors of this time Olympia found means to send out of the city a letter[117] to Lavinia della Rovere.
LETTER TO LAVINIA.
"What a good fortune is it," she writes, "in our misery to have found an opportunity of telling you of our sorrows. Weep for us, my friend; hut at the same time be thankful for our mercies. We are besieged in this town, and shut in without escape, between two great armies. But God has so kept us hitherto, that we have escaped from what seemed certain death. He has fed us, and continues to feed us, in a time of extreme scarcity. My husband, prostrated by disease, was on the brink of the grave. But He hath deigned to recall him to life in mercy to me, who could not have supported so heavy a blow.... In all these afflictions we have had but one consolation, prayer and meditation on the Holy Scriptures. Not once have I turned to look back with regret on the riches of Egypt. And I have felt that to meet death here, is preferable to the enjoyment of all the pleasures of the world elsewhere." "Egypt," and "elsewhere" of course mean Ferrara, with the necessity of concealing her religious faith. She concludes this letter, written amid so great misery, with a burst of affection, which shows how deeply the friendship of her early years had rooted itself in her heart, and how profoundly she had felt the kindness shown to her in her old time of distress.
"Once more, farewell! my own sweetest Lavinia, who livest ever in my heart's core,—quæ mihi semper hæres in medullis,—and whom I can never forget while life remains,—dum spiritus hos reget artus. Adieu! Adieu! and may you live in happiness!"
As the besieging forces, irritated at the length of time the Margrave had succeeded in holding the town against them, redoubled their efforts, the condition of those within the city became continually worse and worse. The houses no longer afforded the inhabitants shelter from the fire of the enemy. "During the whole of that period," writes Olympia to Curione,[118] of the latter part of the siege, "we were obliged to lie concealed in a cellar."
At length, Albert's means of resistance were exhausted; and that "brilliant" specimen of chivalry evacuated the town at the head of his soldiery, with the intention of cutting his way through the besieging forces. Great was the joy in Schweinfurth at his departure; but it was of very short duration. For while one portion of the allied troops pursued the flying Margrave, the forces of Nüremberg, and of the two Bishops, entered the town the next day, determined to treat it as a place taken by assault. They were all good Catholics, and the Schweinfurth people were almost all Protestants, unarmed, worn out by the long miseries of the siege, and much more than decimated by the pestilence.
It was a good opportunity for indulging in every evil passion, under the cloak of religious zeal. And Schweinfurth suffered all the horrors of a sack, inflicted in cold blood by fellow–countrymen, the citizens of neighbouring towns, divided from their victims only by some speculative differences of creed!
ESCAPE FROM THE CITY.
Olympia has recorded some of the incidents of that dreadful day in the letter to her sister, that has been already quoted. The soldiers, rushing into the town in complete disorder, set fire to the houses in many places. "In that moment of trepidation and panic terror," she writes, "my husband and I were rushing to the church as the safest asylum, when a soldier, altogether unknown to us, addressed us, and warned us to fly from the city if we would not be buried beneath its ruins. Had we remained in the church, we should have been suffocated by the smoke, as many were. We followed the man's advice, and made for the gate accordingly." But before they could reach it, the letter goes on to say, they fell into the hands of a party of soldiers, who stripped them of every thing, and took Grünthler prisoner. Escaping from their hands, he was a second time seized before they could reach the gate.[119] "Then, I can tell you, I knew what agony of mind is, if ever I knew it; then I prayed with ardour, if ever I did so. In my sore distress I cried aloud, 'Help me! Help me, Oh Lord, for Christ his sake!' nor did I cease my cry until He helped me, and set my husband free. I would that you could have seen in what a condition I was, covered with fluttering rags, for my clothes had been torn from off my back. In my flight I lost both shoes and stockings, and had to run barefoot over rough stones and rocks, so that in truth I know not how I won through. Again and again I said, 'Here I must fall and die, for I can endure no more.' Then I cried to God, 'Lord, if thou wilt, that I live, command thy angels that they carry me, for carry myself I cannot!'"