nocence. When his comrades were at the table,
Topandy strove always by ambiguous jokes, delivered in his cynical, good
humor, to bring a blush to the cheeks of the girls, who were obliged to
do the honors at table; on such occasions Czipra noisily called him to
order, while Melanie cleverly and spiritedly avoided the arrow-point of
the jest, without opposing to it any foolish prudery, or cold
insensibility;--and how this action made her queen of every heart!

Without doubt she was the monarch of the house: the dearest, most
beautiful, and cleverest;--hers was every triumph.

And on such occasions Czipra was desperate.

"Yet all in vain! For, however clever, and beautiful, and enchanting
that other, I am still the real one. I feel and know it:--but I cannot
prove it! If we could only tear out our hearts and compare them;--but
that is impossible."

Czipra was forced to see that everybody sported with her, while they
behaved seriously with that other.

And that completely poisoned her soul.

Without any mental refinement, supplied with only so much of the
treasure of moral reserve, as nature and instinct had grafted into her
heart, with only a dreamy suspicion about the lofty ideas of religion
and virtue, this girl was capable of murdering her whom they loved
better than herself.

Murder, but not as the fabled queen murdered the fairy Hofeherke,[62]
because the gnomes whispered untiringly in her ear "Thou art beautiful,
fair queen: but Hofeherke is still more beautiful." Czipra wished to
murder her but not so that she might die and then live again.

[Footnote 62: Little Snow-white, the step-daughter of the queen, who
commanded her huntsman to bring her the eyes and liver of Hofeherke,
thinking she would thus become the most beautiful of all, but he brought
her those of a wild beast. The queen thought her rival was dead, but her
magic mirror told her she was living still beyond hill and sea.]

She was a gypsy girl, a heathen, and in love. Inherited tendencies,
savage breeding, and passion had brought her to a state where she could
have such ideas.

It was a hellish idea, the counsel of a restless devil who had stolen
into a defenceless woman's heart.

Once it occurred to her to turn the rooms in the castle upside down; she
found fault with the servants, drove them from their ordinary lodgings,
dispersed them in other directions, chased the gentlemen from their
rooms, under the pretext that the wall-papers were