Frau Kunigunde lingered long, with increasing infirmities. After the
winter day, when, running down at a sudden noise, Friedel picked her
up from the hearthstone, scorched, bruised, almost senseless, she
accepted Christina's care with nothing worse than a snarl, and
gradually seemed to forget the identity of her nurse with the
interloping burgher girl. Thanks or courtesy had been no part of her
nature, least of all towards her own sex, and she did little but
grumble, fret, and revile her attendant; but she soon depended so
much on Christina's care, that it was hardly possible to leave her.
At her best and strongest, her talk was maundering abuse of her son's
low-born wife; but at times her wanderings showed black gulfs of
iniquity and coarseness of soul that would make the gentle listener
tremble, and be thankful that her sons were out of hearing. And thus
did Christina von Adlerstein requite fifteen years of persecution.
The old lady's first failure had been in the summer of 1488; it was
the Advent season of 1489, when the snow was at the deepest, and the
frost at the hardest, that the two hardy mountaineer grandsons
fetched over the pass Father Norbert, and a still sturdier, stronger
monk, to the dying woman.
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