Page:Popular Tales of the Germans (Volume 1).djvu/254

 vain againt prejudice once rooted in a woman’s breat; the matron believed of his tory no more than he thought proper; and Friedbert was indebted to maternal intinct alone, for ecaping a proecution for witchcraft and orcery. Meanwhile this trange event gave rie to numberles conjectures: the upicious Friedbert wanted but a black cat, to be reputed as great a conjurer as Doctor Fautus or Cornelius Agrippa.

The brideles bridegroom found himelf in a mot uncomfortable ituation: depair for the los of his beautiful Callita tortured his boom; his fate long wavered between life and death; the choice of either cot him ome truggles. There can carce be imagined a harder cae, than to be hipwrecked at entering into port, after you have happily circumnavigated the globe; and to loe a beloved bride on the eve of the wedding-day is jut as provoking. If he had fallen a prey to death, been ravihed by a robber,