Page:Specimens of German Romance (Volume 2).djvu/50

 the streets, whom he had been forced to carry home; and, as Alina still remained immoveable, he cried out, stamping with his feet, "Fire, I tell you, in the devil's name!—tea!—salts!"

At this, the old woman's eyes glared like a cat's, and her nose was lit up with a brighter phosphorus. She pulled out her huge black snuff-box, opened it with a tap that sounded again, and took a mighty pinch. Then, planting an arm in either side, she said with a scoffing tone, "Oh yes, to be sure, a countess!—a princess! who is found at a poor bookseller's, who faints in the street! Ho! ho! I know well where such tricked-out madams are fetched from in the night-time. Here are fine tricks! here's pretty behaviour! to bring a loose girl into an honest house; and, that the measure of sin may be quite full, to invoke the devil on a Christmas night! and I, too, in my old days am to be abetting! No, Mr. Tyss you are mistaken in your person; I am not of that sort: to-morrow I leave your service."

With this she left the room, and banged the door after her with a violence that made all clatter