Page:Legends of Rubezahl, and Other Tales (1845).djvu/257

 was accomplished. The victim was secured, and her own heart remained untouched. Now then to complete the thing. Her triumph up to this point was manifest to all, but she reflected, were the prisoner to break her chains, to throw off her authority by his own act, the laugh would be turned against her. To obviate this danger, her plan would be to dismiss him while he was yet her slave, and have thus all the éclat of making what prisoners she chose, and of getting rid of them just when she chose. Chance assisted her views.

Count Rupert von Kefernburg, whose estates lay contiguous to those of Count Ulric, came at this time to Goslar, where the Emperor was holding his Court, for the purpose of introducing a cousin of his, a raw country girl. He here beheld Lucretia, and, the common destiny of all the knights and nobles who, from the four quarters of the empire, repaired to Court, fell desperately in love with her. His physiognomy was such as by no means to recommend him to the fair sex, and, moreover, a negligence on the part of his nurse when he was a child had furnished his back with a superfluity, which had led to his receiving the distinctive appellation of Rupert with the Hump. In those times the art of the tailor had not arrived at its present perfection, in the way of disguising such defects, which, accordingly, as they could not be concealed, were in many cases, without