Page:Tales by Musæus, Tieck, Richter, Volume 1.djvu/117

 to white roses, the sausages to red, the omelets to yellow ones! With joyful amazement the saintly dame observed this metamorphosis, and knew not whether to believe her eyes; for she had never given credit to her Guardian Angel for such delicate politeness, as to work a miracle in favour of a lady, when the point was to cajole a rigorous husband, and make good a female affirmation.

So visible a proof of innocence allayed the fierceness of the Lion. He now turned his tremendous looks on the down-stricken serving-men, who, as it was apparent, had been groundlessly calumniating his angelic wife; he scornfully rated them, and swore a deep oath, that the first eaves-dropping pickthank who again accused his virtuous wife to him, he would cast into the dungeon, and there let him lie and rot. This done, he took a rose from the basket, and stuck it in his hat, in triumph for his lady’s innocence. History has not certified us, whether, on the following day, he found a withered rose or a cold sausage there: in the mean time it assures us, that the saintly wife, when her lord had left her with the kiss of peace, and she herself had recovered from her fright, stept down the hill, much comforted in heart, to the meadow where her nurslings, the lame and blind, the naked and the hungry, were awaiting her, to dole out among them her intended bounty. For she well knew that the miraculous deception would again vanish were she there, as in reality it did; for, on opening her victual-magazine she found no roses at all, but in their stead the nutritious crumbs which she had snatched from the teeth of the castle bone-polishers.

Though now, by the departure of her husband, she was to be freed from his rigorous superintendence, and obtain free scope to execute her labours of love in secret or openly, when and where it pleased her, yet she loved her imperious husband so faithfully and sincerely, that she could not part from him without the deepest sorrow. Ah! she foreboded but too well, that in this world she should not see him any more. And for the enjoyment of him in the other, the aspect of affairs was little better. A canonised Saint has such preferment there, that all other Saints compared with her are but a heavenly mob.

High as the Landgraf had been stationed in this sublunary