Page:Select Popular Tales from the German of Musaeus.djvu/125

Rh succeeded in giving to the beautiful Richilda, three sleepless nights; without the maiden,—when the third morning dawned,—being nearer to her choice than in the first hour. She had, within the term of three days, unceasingly mused on her list of wooers, examined, compared, separated, selected, rejected, selected again, again rejected, and ten times made her choice and ten times altered her mind; and by all these thoughts and meditations she got nothing but a pale countenance, and a pair of melancholy eyes. In affairs of the heart, the understanding is always a poor prattler, who, with its cold reasonings, as little warms the heart as a stove without a fire heats a room. The maiden’s heart took no part in the deliberation, and refused its assent to all the motions of the speakers in the upper house, the head; therefore no choice could stand good. With great attention she weighed the birth, merits, possessions, and honour of her suitors; but none of these honourable qualities interested her, and her heart was silent. As soon as she took into consideration the pleasing forms of her wooers, it gave a soft accord. Human nature has not altered a hair’s breadth in the half thousand years which have elapsed from the time of the beautiful Richilda to ours. Give a maiden of the eighteenth or of the thirteenth century a wise, clever man, in a word a Socrates, for a lover; place beside him a handsome man, an Adonis, Ganymede, or Endymion, and give her the choice; you may lay a hundred to one, that she will turn coldly away from the former, and foolishly choose one of the latter. Just so the beautiful Richilda! Among her lovers were many handsome men; it then remained to choose the handsomest; time slipped away in these consultations, the court assembled in the drawing-room, the Counts and noble Knights came in full dress, awaiting with beating of heart the determination of their fate.

The maiden found herself in no little embarrassment; her heart refused (notwithstanding the sacredness of her promise) to decide. At last she thought there must be a path out of the wood; she sprang hastily from her sofa, stood before the mirror, and asked it—

This question was not of the best, that is of the most virtuous, the most noble and faithful man, out only of the handsomest. The mirror answered as it had been asked; as she drew back the silken curtain, there was presented to her view, on the surface as smooth as water, the figure of a stately knight, in full armour, but without his helmet. His hair waved in chestnut-coloured locks from the top of his head; his small and thick eyebrows imitated the form of the rainbow; in his fiery eyes shone boldness and heroic courage, his cheeks, tinged with manly brown and red,