o
ahead! What have you to disclose to me of the future?' The woman,
looking at his hand, said, 'Hail, my Elector and Sovereign! Your Grace
will reign for a long time, the house from which you spring will long
endure, and your descendants will be great and glorious and will come
to exceed in power all the other princes and sovereigns of the world.'

"The Elector, after a pause in which he looked thoughtfully at the
woman, said in an undertone, as he took a step toward me, that he was
almost sorry now that he had sent off a messenger to ruin the
prophecy; and while amid loud rejoicing the money rained down in heaps
into the woman's lap from the hands of the knights who followed the
Elector, the latter, after feeling in his pocket and adding a gold
piece on his own account, asked if the salutation which she was about
to about to reveal to me also had such a silvery sound as his. The
woman opened a box that stood beside her and in a leisurely, precise
way arranged the money in it according to kind and quantity; then she
closed it again, shaded her eyes with her hand as if the sun annoyed
her, and looked at me. I repeated the question I had asked her and,
while she examined my hand, I added jokingly to the Elector, 'To me,
so it seems, she has nothing really agreeable to announce!' At that
she seized her crutches, raised herself slowly with their aid from her
stool, and, pressing close to me with her hands held before her
mysteriously, she whispered audibly in my ear, 'No!' 'Is that so?' I
asked confused, and drew back a step before the figure, who with a
look cold and lifeless as though from eyes of marble, seated herself
once more on the stool behind her; 'from what quarter does danger
menace my house?' The woman, taking a piece of charcoal and a paper in
her hand and crossing her knees, asked whether she should write it
down for me; and as I, really embarrassed, though only because under
the existing circumstances there was nothing else for me to do,
answered, 'Yes, do so,' she replied, 'Very well! Three things I will
write down for you--the name of the last ruler of your house, the year
in which he will lose his throne, and the name of the man who through
the power of arms will seize it for himself.' Having done this before
the eyes of all the people she arose, sealed the paper with a wafer,
which she moistened in her withered mouth, and pressed upon it a
leaden seal ring which she wore on her middle finger. And as I,
c