Page:Legends of Rubezahl, and Other Tales (1845).djvu/217

 corpus delicti, the gigantic head, which, hurled by the hand of Black Mantle, had levelled him with the earth. This was put into the hands of the physician, for him to examine, and give in his official visum repertum thereupon; and that learned personage, without finding it necessary to have recourse to any anatomical investigation, at once reported the subject to be nothing but a large pumpkin filled with sand and stones, and which, having eyes and a mouth cut in it, with the addition of a wooden nose and a long tow beard, had somewhat the appearance of a grotesque human head.

When the party rose from table and broke up, daylight was already beginning to appear. The ladies found in their apartments sumptuous beds, in which sleep so instantaneously overpowered them that their fancy had no opportunity of recalling their thoughts to the alarms of the preceding night. The sun was high when the Countess, awaking, rung for her attendant, and ordered her to call the young ladies, who were much more disposed to turn on their down pillows and sleep on the other ear, than to rise. But so impatient was the Countess to prove the virtues of the waters of Carlsbad, that the most pressing entreaties of their hospitable entertainer could not prevail with her for even one day’s delay, though the girls, exceedingly desirous of dancing at the ball he promised them for