This little girl, Elizabeth, daughter of the King of Hungary, is running to meet her future husband at whose home she was brought up. They were very much in love, and every time he had been away to some city he would bring her back a present such as a pair of gloves or a bag or a coral rosary. His father was Landgrave (or Earl) of Thuringia, which is an old name for part of Germany.

When Louis was twenty-one and was now Earl in his father’s place, he and Elizabeth were married; she was only fourteen. On her way to the Altar, passing a large crucifix, she fell down on her knees and cast off her coronet, as she hated wearing it when she saw our Lord on the Cross. After her marriage, she spent all her spare time in helping the sick and poor.

Louis was a good husband and let nothing stand in the way of his wife’s prayers and good deeds. Once when he was away from home Elizabeth put a leper to bed in their room. The Earl came back and pulled the blankets off in disgust, but it seemed to him that he saw Christ lying there, for the Saint had done for the sick man what she would have done for Him.

There was a great famine in the country and Elizabeth did all she could to relieve want. One day her husband met her going out with an armful of loaves wrapped in her mantle, and when she showed him what she was carrying, the bread turned into roses as she spread out her cloak.

Louis went off to the Crusades and died soon after leaving home. Elizabeth was broken-hearted, for they had had a very happy life together. Her brother-in-law was put in charge of the estate till Louis’ son came of age, and Elizabeth and her three children, Herman, Sophia, and Gertrude, were treated unkindly and at length driven out of their castle. Life was made very hard for them.

But she was used to doing without as she had always given so much away, and she even sold her few remaining possessions to build a hospital. She would spin wool, and fish in the streams to earn more money, and her curtains and bedclothes were used as towels and coverings for the patients. Worn out with work and self-sacrifice, Elizabeth was only twenty-four when she died.