Having done this before the eyes of all the people she arose, sealed the paper with a wafer, which she moistened in her withered mouth, and pressed upon it a leaden seal ring which she wore on her middle finger.  And as I, curious beyond all words, as you can well imagine, was about to seize the paper, she said, ‘Not so, Your Highness!’ and turned and raised one of her crutches; ’from that man there, the one with the plumed hat, standing on the bench at the entrance of the church behind all the people—­from him you shall redeem it, if it so please you!’ And with these words, before I had clearly grasped what she was saying, she left me standing in the square, speechless with astonishment, and, clapping shut the box that stood behind her and slinging it over her back, she disappeared in the crowd of people surrounding us, so that I could no longer watch what she was doing.  But at this moment, to my great consolation, I must admit, there appeared the knight whom the Elector had sent to the castle, and reported, with a smile hovering on his lips, that the roebuck had been killed and dragged off to the kitchen by two hunters before his very eyes.  The Elector, gaily placing his arm in mine with the intention of leading me away from the square, said, ’Well then, the prophecy was a commonplace swindle and not worth the time and money which it has cost us!’ But how great was our astonishment when, even before he had finished speaking, a cry went up around the whole square, and the eyes of all turned toward a large butcher’s dog trotting along from the castle yard.  In the kitchen he had seized the roebuck by the neck as a fair prize, and, pursued by men-servants and maids, dropped the animal on the ground three paces in front of us.  Thus indeed the woman’s prophecy, which was the pledge for the truth of all that she had uttered, was fulfilled, and the roebuck, although dead to be sure, had come to the market-place to meet us.  The lightning which falls from heaven on a winter’s day cannot annihilate more completely than this sight did me, and my first endeavor, as soon as I had excused myself from the company which surrounded me, was to discover immediately the whereabouts of the man with the plumed hat whom the woman had pointed out to me; but none of my people, though sent out on a three days’ continuous search, could give me even the remotest kind of information concerning him.  And then, friend Kunz, a few weeks ago in the farm-house at Dahme, I saw the man with my own eyes!”

With these words he let go of the Chamberlain’s hand and, wiping away the perspiration, sank back again on the couch.  The Chamberlain, who considered it a waste of effort to attempt to contradict the Elector’s opinion of the incident or to try to make him adopt his own view of the matter, begged him by all means to try to get possession of the paper and afterward to leave the fellow to his fate.  But the Elector answered that he saw absolutely no way of doing so,