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Updated: June 15, 2025
Hans Eitelfritz warned them to hasten, carried the senseless man, with Adam's assistance, to the cart, and half an hour later the dangerously wounded, outcast son was lying in the most comfortable bed in the best room in his father's house. His couch was in the upper story; down in the kitchen old Rahel was moving about the hearth, preparing her "good salve" herself.
Old Rahel, too, had regained her self-control, and was sound asleep. The children followed her example, and at midnight Elizabeth slept too. Marx lay beside the hearth, and from his crooked mouth came a strange, snoring noise, that sounded like the last note of an organ-pipe, from which the air is expiring.
Come, come! Oh, I am caught, I can go no farther!" Mortal terror had seized the old woman; she did not want to die. To the girl death was welcome, and she did not stir. Voices were now audible in the vestibule, but they sounded neither noisy nor threatening; yet Rahel shrieked in despair as a lansquenet, fully armed, entered the workshop with the armorer.
Everything was ready for departure, but old Rahel objected to travelling further. She was sitting on a stone before the hut, for the smoke in the narrow room oppressed her breathing, and it seemed as if terror had robbed her of her senses. Gazing into vacancy with wild eyes and chattering teeth, she tried to make cakes and mould dumplings out of the snow, which she probably took for flour.
"To be sure, sitting still is more comfortable than running." "What do you mean by that?" "Do you suppose yonder books are the walls of Zion? Do you feel inclined to make the monks' acquaintance once more?" "Fie, fie, Rahel, listening again? Go into the kitchen!" "Directly! Directly! But I will speak first. You pretend, that you are only staying here to please your wife, but it's no such thing.
When Hans Eitelfritz returned at midnight, the cart with the food and liquor was ready. Adam's warnings were unavailing. Ruth resolutely insisted upon accompanying him, and he well knew what urged her to risk safety and life as freely as he did himself. Old Rahel had done her best to conceal Ruth's beauty. The dangerous nocturnal pilgrimage began.
Old Rahel uttered a fresh wail of grief, when she saw this shelter; but after the men had removed the snow as well as they could, and covered the holes in the roof with pine-branches; when Adam had lighted a fire, and the sacks and coverlets were brought in from the sledge, and laid on a dry spot to furnish seats for the women, fresh courage entered their hearts, and Rahel, unasked, dragged herself to the hearth, and set the snow-filled pot on the fire.
Ruth, sobbing bitterly, crouched on the ground by her mother's side, and old Rahel, who had entirely regained her self-control, pressed a cloth, wet with wine, on his forehead. The young count approached the dying Jew. His father slowly followed, drew the boy to his side, and said in a low, sad tone: "I am sorry for the man; he saved my life."
Meantime, Lopez had compelled old Rahel to rise. Everything must be ready, when Ulrich returned. In his impatience he had gone to the door, and when he saw Adam hurrying up the glade with the child, ran anxiously to meet them, thinking that some accident had happened to Ulrich. "Back, back!" shouted the smith, and Ruth, releasing her hand from his, also motioned and shrieked "Back, back!"
The terrified moans of the startled wife, and Ruth's loud weeping and curious questions, were soon drowned by the lamentations of old Rahel, who wrapped in even more kerchiefs than usual, rushed into the sitting-room, and while lamenting and scolding in a foreign tongue, gathered together everything that lay at hand.
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