Page:Select Popular Tales from the German of Musaeus.djvu/20

8 pay her again, and that this branch of the trade was become wholly unprofitable. Franz directly hastened to a goldsmith’s, sold a pair of his mother’s gold earrings, and purchasing a quantity of lint, sent it by a woman to offer it to his neighbour at a more moderate price. The bargain was concluded, and on such good terms, that on next All Saints’ Day the lovely Mela was seen in an elegant new dress.

At the moment our hero was congratulating himself on the success of his stratagem, it was unluckily discovered. For mother Brigitta, desirous of doing a kindness to the good woman who had served her in the sale of the lint, invited her to a treat, very common in those days, before tea and coffee were known, of rice-milk, made very savoury with sugar, richly spiced, and a bottle of Spanish wine. Such a repast not only set the old lady’s lips in motion, as she sipped and sipped, but likewise loosened her tongue. She declared she would provide more lint at the same price, granting her merchant would prove agreeable; which, for the best of reasons, she could not doubt. The lady and her daughter very naturally inquired further, until their female curiosity was gratified at the expense of the old woman’s discretion, and she revealed the whole secret. Mela changed colour, not a little alarmed at the discovery; though she would have been delighted had her mother not been present. Aware of her strict notions of propriety, she began to tremble for her new gown. The good lady was, indeed, both shocked and displeased at so unexpected a piece of intelligence, and wished as much as her daughter that she alone had been made acquainted with it, lest their young neighbour’s liberality, by making an impression on the girl’s heart, might eventually thwart all her plans. She forthwith determined to adopt such measures as should eradicate every seed of budding affection which might be lurking in Mela’s heart. Spite of the tears and entreaties of its possessor, the gown was next day sold, and the proceeds, together with the profits of her late bargain, returned under the pretence of an old debt, by the hand of the Hamburg trading messenger, to young Mr. Franz Melchior. He received the packet as an especial blessing on the part of Providence, and only hoped that all the debtors of his father’s house might be induced to discharge their debts with as much punctuality as the honest unknown. The truth never glanced across his mind; for the gossiping old body was careful not to betray her own treachery, merely informing him that Madame Brigitta had wholly discontinued the lint trade. His more faithful mirror, however, shortly told him that a great change had occurred in the opposite dwelling in the course of a single night. The flower-pots had vanished, and the blinds were drawn down even closer than before. Mela was rarely to be seen; and when she did appear, like the lovely moon, gleaming through a mass of dark clouds on the benighted traveller, her