Page:Tales by Musæus, Tieck, Richter, Volume 1.djvu/74

66 wind passed through them, whispered a melodious evening salutation to the trustful pair. She instructed her attentive disciple in the secrets of Nature; showed him the origin and cause of things; taught him their common and their magic properties and effects; and formed the rude soldier into a thinker and philosopher.

In proportion as the feelings and senses of the young man grew refined by this fair spiritual intercourse, it seemed as if the tender form of the Elf were condensing, and acquiring more consistency; her bosom caught warmth and life; her brown eyes sparkled with the fire of love; and with the shape, she appeared to have adopted the feelings of a young blooming maiden. The sentimental hour of dusk, which is as if expressly calculated to awaken slumbering feelings, had its usual effect; and after a few moons from their first acquaintance, the sighing Krokus found himself possessed of the happiness in Love, which the Third Reed-stalk had appointed him; and did not repent that by the trap-door of Passion the freedom of his heart had been ensnared. Though the marriage of the tender pair took place without witnesses, it was celebrated with as much enjoyment as the most tumultuous espousals; nor were speaking proofs of love’s recompense long wanting. The Elf gave her husband three daughters at a birth; and the father, rejoicing in the bounty of his better half, named, at the first embrace, the eldest infant, Bela; the next born, Therba; and the youngest, Libussa. They were all like the Genies in beauty of form; and though not moulded of such light materials as the mother, their corporeal structure was finer than the dull earthy clay of the father. They were also free from all the infirmities of childhood; their swathings did not gall them; they teethed without epileptic fits, needed no calomel taken inwardly, got no rickets; had no small-pox, and, of course, no scars, no scum-eyes, or puckered faces: nor did they require any leading-strings; for after the first nine days, they ran like little partridges; and as they grew up, they manifested all the talents of the mother for discovering hidden things, and predicting what was future.

Krokus himself, by the aid of time, grew skilful in these mysteries also. When the wolf had scattered the flocks through the forest, and the herdsmen were seeking for their sheep and