For your sake I have stabbed my two children with this
pin, your first love-gift; the four eyes are extinguished forever.
Now, marry me!' But the burgrave recoiled in terror, and pushed back
the murderess, who was about to embrace him. He then dragged her
through the rooms to the dungeon of the castle. She begged and
cried, but the burgrave had no mercy upon the infanticide, and
hurled her down into the dungeon. He then informed the courts of the
crime that had been committed. The Countess von Orlamunde, the last
member of her family, was put on trial, and sentence of death passed
upon her. The burgrave of Nuremberg sent the first executioner from
the city to the Plassenburg, and the countess was beheaded in the
presence of the burgrave, and in the same room in which she had
murdered her children. Before putting her head on the block she
glanced at the handsome burgrave, raised both her arms toward
heaven, and took a fearful oath that she would avenge herself on him
and his house; that, whenever one of his descendants was at the
point of death, she would be present, as the burgrave himself was
now present at her death; that she would never rest in her grave,
but live and walk, though the burgrave had her executed, and that,
as she was before him now at her last hour, she would appear to him
at his last hour. After uttering these words, she put her head
calmly on the block.
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