ld no longer bear the
burden of her embittered life.

It was evident to me that a deep-seated melancholy had taken possession
of my friend, and often showed itself; his mind, however, was not so
affected as to display any symptoms of weariness of life, which made me
hope that his misfortune and the evil fate that had attended him, would
serve to purify his character, and give him that genuine deportment
which is essential even to those who are not tried by calamity, and
much more to those who have to pass through heavy trials.

There lived in the neighbourhood about that time a wild old woman who
was half crazy, and who went begging from village to village.

The higher class called her jokingly, the Sibyl, the common people did
not hesitate to call her a witch. The place of her residence was not
exactly known; probably she had no certain place of resort, as she was
constantly seen on the high-roads, and roaming in every direction in
the country. Some old rangers maintained that she was a descendant of
that notorious gang of gipsies whom Count Moritz many years before had
persecuted and dispersed.

Walking one day in a beautiful beech-wood, and engaged in conversation
which made us forget the world without, we suddenly saw, at a turn of
the footpath, the old hideous Sibyl before us. Being both in a
cheerful mood, we were rather astonished, but in no way startled.
Having dismissed the impudent beggar by giving her some money, she
hastily returned, saying: "Will not you have your fortunes told for
what you have given to me?"

"If it is something good that you can tell me, you may earn a few more
pence."

I held out to her my hand at which she looked at very carefully, and
then said, scornfully: "My good sir, you have a miserable hand which
would puzzle even the best fortune-teller. Such a middling person,
neither one thing nor the other, as you, I have never seen in all my
life; you are neither wise nor stupid, neither bad nor good, neither
fortunate nor unfortunate; without passions, mind, virtue, or vice; you
are what I call a real A.B.C. scholar of Heaven's blockheads, and you
will not in all your life have the slight merit of ever perceiving your
own insignificance. From your paltry hand and unmeaning countenance
nothing at all can be prophesied; a dry fungus, without it is first
prepared and macerated, cannot even receive a spark. Therefore, Jack
Mean-nothing, your dull nature will never live to see any t