cted by the warmth of the mustard.

It is believed in many parts of Europe that treasures can be found on
St. John's Eve by means of the fern-seed. Even without the use of this
plant treasures are sometimes said to bloom or burn in the earth, or
to reveal their presence by a bluish flame on Midsummer Eve. As
guardian of treasures the devil is the successor of the gnome.

THE DEVIL'S WAGER

BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

_The Devil's Wager_ is Thackeray's earliest attempt at story-writing,
was contributed to a weekly literary paper with the imposing title
_The National Standard, and Journal of Literature, Science, Music,
Theatricals, and the Fine Arts_, of which he was proprietor and
editor, and was reprinted in the _Paris Sketch Book_ (1840). The story
first ended with the very Thackerayesque touch: "The moral of this
story will be given in several successive numbers." In the _Paris
Sketch Book_ the last three words are changed into "the second
edition." This comical tale was illustrated by an excellent wood-cut,
representing the devil as sailing through the air, dragging after him
the fat Sir Roger de Rollo by means of his tail, which is wound round
Sir Roger's neck.

In the "Advertisement to the First Edition" of his _Paris Sketch
Book_, Thackeray admits the French origin of this as well as of his
other devil-story, _The Painter's Bargain_, to be found in the same
volume. It was Thackeray's good fortune to live in Paris during the
wildest and most brilliant years of Romanticism; and while his
attitude towards this movement and its leaders, as presented in the
_Paris Sketch Book_, is not wholly sympathetic, he is indebted to it
for his interest in supernatural subjects. The Romanticism of
Thackeray has been denied with great obstinacy and almost passion, for
like Heinrich Heine, the chief of German Romantic ironists, he poked
fun at this movement. But "to laugh at what you love," as Mr. George
Saintsbury has pointed out in his _History of the French Novel_, "is
not only permissible, but a sign of the love itself."

Mercurius makes a pun on the familiar quotation "rara avis" from
Horace (_Sat._ 2, 2. 26), where it means a rare bird. This expression
is commonly applied to a singular person. It is also found in the
_Satires_ of Juvenal (VI, 165).

THE PAINTER'S BARGAIN

BY WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

The belief in compacts with the devil is of great antiquity. Satan,
contending with God for t