nwhile she hunted the stag and the board, and
performed squire's service for her gradually declining parent. This
manner of life was so entirely to the taste of the maiden,
notwithstanding that in delicacy of frame, and in bewitching
gracefulness of figure, she gave place to none of her sex, that when
at length her father died, she took upon herself the management of
the castle, and lived aloof in pride and independence, in the very
fashion of an Amazon. Maugre the many refusals which Swanhilda had
already distributed on every side, there still flocked to her loving
knights, eager to wed; but, like their predecessors, they were all
sent drooping home again. The young nobility could at last bear this
treatment no longer; and they, one and all, resolved either to
constrain the supercilious damsel to wedlock, or to make her smart
for a refusal. An embassy was dispatched, charged with notifying this
resolution to the mistress of the castle. Swanhilda heard the
speakers quietly to the end; but her answer was tuned as before, or
indeed rang harsher and more offensive than ever. Turning her back
upon the embassy, she left them to depart, scorned and ashamed.

"In the night following the day upon which this happened, Swanhilda
was disturbed out of her sleep by a noise which seemed to her to
ascend from her chamber floor; but let her strain her eyes as she
might, she could for a long while discern nothing. At length she
observed, in the middle of the room, a straying sparkle of light,
that threw itself over and over like a tumbler, tittering, at the
same time, like a human being. Swanhilda for a while kept herself
quiet; but as the luminous antic ceased not practising his
harlequinade, she peevishly exclaimed--'What buffoon is carrying on
his fooleries here? I desire to be left in peace.' The light vanished
instantly, and Swanhilda already had congratulated herself upon
gaining her point, when suddenly a loud shrilly sound was heard--the
floor of the apartment gave way, and from the gap there arose a table
set out with the choicest viands. It rested upon a lucid body of air,
upon which the tiny attendants skipped with great agility to and fro,
waiting upon seated guests. At first Swanhilda was so amazed that her
breath forsook her; but becoming by degrees somewhat collected, she
observed, to her extreme astonishment, that an effigy of herself sat
at the strange table, in the midst of the numerous train of suitors,
whom she had