Page:Legends of Rubezahl, and Other Tales (1845).djvu/135

 The spectators, who had watched the proceedings with the greatest interest, pronounced the decision of the sapient magistrates of Hirschberg to be in the highest degree right and reasonable; and of the whole audience, no one was louder in his applause than the good Samaritan who helped the Jew home, and who, having made his way into the thick of the crowd, had manifested huge delight at the way in which matters went from first to last against the poor fellow at the bar, though no one knew better than he the entire innocence of the accused,—seeing that it was he himself, the malicious Rubezahl, who, as we have before intimated, had, unseen of all, put the Jew’s purse that he had taken into the unfortunate tailor’s wallet. With the earliest dawn the Gnome, under the form of a raven, was perched upon the gallows, awaiting with eagerness the fatal procession that was to gratify his revenge so far, and moreover, with a raven’s appetite, well disposed to pick out the eyes of the sufferer for breakfast. But once again he reckoned without his host.

A pious monk, one of those who, out of pure desire to save men’s souls, attend criminals under sentence of death, had found Benedict so deplorably ignorant of all religious matters, that it was impossible to prepare him for death in the short time allowed, and he had therefore obtained for his penitent a respite for three days, though not without a great deal of trouble,