Page:Select Popular Tales from the German of Musaeus.djvu/164

150 lations, he immediately began his task. But this he soon found was no such easy matter. Hour after hour did our lover labour at his task; at length it was accomplished, and he hurried to the palace. There a dead silence reigned. “I shall find her in the garden, gathering flowers for the bridal wreath,” said the gnome; but in vain did he make the groves resound with the loved name of Emma—echo alone answered him, as if in mockery. A sudden suspicion came across him, he darted upwards, and in another instant stood upon the surface of the earth. Unhappy sprite, what a heart-rending scene did he now behold! There was his loved Emma, mounted on a steed swifter than the wind, flying to her former lover, Prince Ratibor, who rapidly approached her. He now comprehended the whole extent of his misfortune. The deceitful Emma had abstracted one of the turnips, metamorphosed it into a fiery courser, and had nearly attained the boundary of his territory, beyond which he had no power. “Ah, traitress! you shall not escape me,” exclaimed the indignant gnome, as he darted after the flying fair one. Furious the gnome laid hold of two clouds which were near him, dashed them with a hideous crash against each other, and sent after the fugitive a flash of lightning, which shivered in a thousand pieces a massive oak tree, which for ages had marked the boundary of his dominions. The boundary, however, the princess had luckily just passed, and beyond that Rübezahl was powerless.

The deserted spirit rent the air with his cries, and plunged down to his subterraneous dominions, there to bewail his disappointment, and to lament his ill-fortune. In his rage he stamped his feet, and in a moment the magic palace disappeared, while the gnome betook himself once more to his former solitary abode in the centre of the earth, with a heart still more embittered against the inhabitants of this upper earth.

The report of the strange adventure of the princess, and the ingenious device by which she effected her escape, was soon spread abroad throughout her father’s kingdom, and in all the surrounding country, and it became a tradition, which descended from generation to generation, until at last the common people were accustomed to give the gnome, for want of a better, the name of Rübezahl, or the Turnip Counter; thus perpetuating in the most lasting manner the memory of his unlucky mishap.