e were even dying at her feet.

The good effects of this system were wonderfully apparent. The young
lady was a pattern of docility and correctness. While others were
wasting their sweetness in the glare of the world, and liable to be
plucked and thrown aside by every hand, she was coyly blooming into
fresh and lovely womanhood under the protection of those immaculate
spinsters, like a rosebud blushing forth among guardian thorns. Her
aunts looked upon her with pride and exultation, and vaunted that though
all the other young ladies in the world might go astray, yet, thank
Heaven, nothing of the kind could happen to the heiress of
Katzenellenbogen.

But, however scantily the Baron Von Landshort might be provided with
children, his household was by no means a small one; for Providence had
enriched him with abundance of poor relations. They, one and all,
possessed the affectionate disposition common to humble relatives; were
wonderfully attached to the baron, and took every possible occasion to
come in swarms and enliven the castle. All family festivals were
commemorated by these good people at the baron's expense; and when they
were filled with good cheer, they would declare that there was nothing
on earth so delightful as these family meetings, these jubilees of the
heart.

The baron, though a small man, had a large soul, and it swelled with
satisfaction at the consciousness of being the greatest man in the
little world about him. He loved to tell long stories about the dark old
warriors whose portraits looked grimly down from the walls around, and
he found no listeners equal to those that fed at his expense. He was
much given to the marvelous, and a firm believer in all those
supernatural tales with which every mountain and valley in Germany
abounds. The faith of his guests exceeded even his own: they listened to
every tale of wonder with open eyes and mouth, and never failed to be
astonished, even though repeated for the hundredth time. Thus lived the
Baron Von Landshort, the oracle of his table, the absolute monarch of
his little territory, and happy, above all things, in the persuasion
that he was the wisest man of the age.

At the time of which my story treats, there was a great family gathering
at the castle, on an affair of the utmost importance: it was to receive
the destined bridegroom of the baron's daughter. A negotiation had been
carried on between the father and an old nobleman of Bavaria, to unite
the