Page:Legends of Rubezahl, and Other Tales (1845).djvu/228

 I thought that anybody might be Rubezahl that liked: I have now found out my mistake. I am quite at your mercy; and I hope that the sincerity of my confessions may disarm your anger. Nay, with what perfect ease to yourself might you have the satisfaction of making an honest man of me; ’twould be nothing to you to give me a handful of dollars out of the copper, or to treat me as you did the hungry traveller who, having gathered a score or two of sloes from your hedge, broke one tooth, indeed, with the first, but was indemnified for his loss by finding all the rest of the fruit turned into gold; or suppose it were your good pleasure to give me one of the eight golden nine-pins you have still left (you gave the ninth to a student of Prague who had been playing with you); or the little pitcher, the milk from which becomes gold cheese; or, being as I am a guilty wretch, suppose you were to beat me with such a gold rod as served you once upon a time to castigate the travelling shoemaker, and then let me, as you did him, carry away the instrument of my punishment as a memorial. In any of these ways my fortune would be made. Indeed, my Lord, if you will reflect upon the wants we poor mortals are subject to, you must admit it is very difficult to act with strict integrity when one is in want of everything, and can get nothing by honest industry. The proverb says: ‘Necessity has no law.