Page:Tales by Musæus, Tieck, Richter, Volume 1.djvu/93

Rh of the hunter Mizisla. They were admitted, and the Freeholder first addressing her, began: “An industrious planter,” said he, “fenced-in a little circuit, on the bank of a broad river, whose waters glided down with soft rushing through the green valley; for, he thought, The fair stream will be a guard to me on this side, that no hungry wild-beast eat my crops, and it will moisten the roots of my fruit-trees, that they flourish speedily and bring me fruit. But when the earnings of his toil were about to ripen, the deceitful stream grew troubled; its still waters began to swell and roar, it overflowed its banks, and carried one piece after another of the fruitful soil along with it; and dug itself a bed through the middle of the cultivated land; to the sorrow of the poor planter, who had to give up his little property to the malicious wasting of his strong neighbour, the raging of whose waves he himself escaped with difficulty. Puissant daughter of the wise Krokus, the poor planter entreats of thee to command the haughty river no longer to roll its proud billows over the field of the toilsome husbandman, or wash away the fruit of his weary arms, his hope of glad harvest; but to flow peacefully along within the limits of its own channel.”

During this speech, the cheerful brow of the fair Libussa became overclouded; manly rigour gleamed from her eyes, and all around was ear to catch her sentence, which ran thus: “Thy cause is plain and straight; no force shall disturb thy rightful privileges. A dike, which it shall not overpass, shall set bounds to the tumultuous river; and from its fishes thou shalt be repaid sevenfold the plunder of its wasteful billows.” Then she beckoned to the eldest of the Deputies, and he bowed his face to the earth, and said: “Wise daughter of the far-famed Krokus, Whose is the grain upon the field, the sower’s, who has hidden the seed-corn in the ground that it spring up and bear fruit; or the tempest’s, which breaks it and scatters it away?” She answered: “The sower’s.”—“Then command the tempest,” said the spokesman, “that it choose not our corn-fields for the scene of its caprices, to uproot our crops and shake the fruit from our trees.”—“So be it,” said the Duchess; “I will tame the tempest, and banish it from your fields; it shall battle with the clouds, and disperse them, where they are rising from the south, and threatening the land with hail and heavy weather.”