Page:Fairytales00auln.djvu/113

Rh been more astonished. She thought the musician himself possessed by a demon. The Sprite glided out of the apartment without discovering himself, and returned immediately to his own lodgings, whence he wrote to Blondine, reproaching her as she deserved. Without waiting for her answer, he departed, leaving his splendid carriage and horses to his equerries and gentlemen. He paid the rest of his people handsomely, and mounted his faithful Grisdelin, determined never to love again after the trick that had been played him.

Leander rode away at full speed. He was for a long time a prey to grief, but reason and absence gradually worked a cure. He arrived at another city, where he learned that a great ceremony was about to take place that very day, on the occasion of a young maiden being admitted into the order of Vestals, although contrary to her own inclinations. The prince pitied her. It seemed as if his little red hat was given him expressly to repair public injuries and console the afflicted. He ran to the temple. The young creature was crowned with flowers, dressed in white, with her hair flowing on her shoulders; two of her brothers led her by the hand, and her mother followed her, with a large company of both sexes. The eldest Vestal was in waiting at the gates of the temple. At this moment the Sprite shouted, "Stop! stop! Wicked brothers! Reckless parent! Stop! Heaven is opposed to this unjust ceremony. If you venture to proceed you shall be crushed like frogs."

They stared about them without being able to discover whence proceeded these terrible threats. The brothers said it was the lover of their sister, who had hidden himself in some hole to play the oracle; but the Sprite in great wrath took a long stick and inflicted a hundred blows on them. The stick was seen to rise and fall on their shoulders like a hammer upon an anvil. Nobody could doubt that the blows were real. Terror seized the Vestals, they fled, and everybody followed their example. The Sprite alone remained with the young victim. He quickly took off his little hat, and begged to know how he could assist her. She told him, with more courage than one would have expected in a girl of her age, that there was a knight to whom she was not indifferent, but that he had no fortune. Leander shook his rose so much that he left with them ten millions; they married and lived very happily.