urious beyond all words, as you can well imagine, was about to seize
the paper, she said, 'Not so, Your Highness!' and turned and raised
one of her crutches; 'from that man there, the one with the plumed
hat, standing on the bench at the entrance of the church behind all
the people--from him you shall redeem it, if it so please you!' And
with these words, before I had clearly grasped what she was saying,
she left me standing in the square, speechless with astonishment, and,
clapping shut the box that stood behind her and slinging it over her
back, she disappeared in the crowd of people surrounding us, so that I
could no longer watch what she was doing. But at this moment, to my
great consolation, I must admit, there appeared the knight whom the
Elector had sent to the castle, and reported, with a smile hovering on
his lips, that the roebuck had been killed and dragged off to the
kitchen by two hunters before his very eyes. The Elector, gaily
placing his arm in mine with the intention of leading me away from the
square, said, 'Well then, the prophecy was a commonplace swindle and
not worth the time and money which it has cost us!' But how great was
our astonishment when, even before he had finished speaking, a cry
went up around the whole square, and the eyes of all turned toward a
large butcher's dog trotting along from the castle yard. In the
kitchen he had seized the roebuck by the neck as a fair prize, and,
pursued by men-servants and maids, dropped the animal on the ground
three paces in front of us. Thus indeed the woman's prophecy, which
was the pledge for the truth of all that she had uttered, was
fulfilled, and the roebuck, although dead to be sure, had come to the
market-place to meet us. The lightning which falls from heaven on a
winter's day cannot annihilate more completely than this sight did me,
and my first endeavor, as soon as I had excused myself from the
company which surrounded me, was to discover immediately the
whereabouts of the man with the plumed hat whom the woman had pointed
out to me; but none of my people, though sent out on a three days'
continuous search, could give me even the remotest kind of information
concerning him. And then, friend Kunz, a few weeks ago in the
farm-house at Dahme, I saw the man with my own eyes!"

With these words he let go of the Chamberlain's hand and, wiping away
the perspiration, sank back again on the couch. The Chamberlain, who
considered it a waste of effort t