These are the only regions in which merit holds the place it is entitled to or justice is done to the claims of virtue.  What is the tenderness of Baucis, or the long fidelity of Penelope?  Fiction only.  And the resignation of the gentle Griseldis—­what is it?  An old tale of other days.  In order to find the good woman we are looking for, this is the ivory portal at which we must knock.

Acting upon this conviction, I reperused all the old traditions, I called to my aid that peculiar lore of nations which is embodied in their legends, and which is so vividly, so amiably, and so ingenuously expressed.  I interrogated the story-tellers of every country, Indian, Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Chinese, Italian, Spanish, French, German, English, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Russian, Lithuanian, and even the hoary old wayside narrators of the far Thibet.  I plunged into this ocean of fancy with the recklessness of an accomplished diver, but,—­must I acknowledge it?—­less fortunate than even Montaigne with his history, I have succeeded in bringing back only one woman that I can call really good, and her I have had to disinter from under the ice and snows of the North, in a wild country, too, and among a people who are not so delicate and refined as though Paris were in Norway.  From Cadiz to Stockholm, from London to Cairo and Delhi, from Paris to Teheran and Samarcand, if the stories are to be believed, there are artful girls and scheming mothers, in any quantity; but the good woman!—­where does she lie hid, and why do they never tell us anything about her?  Here is a hiatus to which I specially call the attention of the learned.  In observing it myself, I feel the more emboldened to relate the story of the only good woman and wife I have unearthed.  It is a simple narrative, and not thoroughly in accordance with every-day experience, and, indeed, there may be some squeamish people who will say that it is ridiculous.  No matter—­it has one good quality which no one can dispute—­it is not in the ordinary style of either adventure or narration.  Novelty is all the rage at the present day, and what imparts value to things is not their intrinsic merit, but their strangeness.

Here, then, is my story presented to you, kind reader, just as Messrs. Asbjoernsen and Moe give it, in their curious collection of Norwegian tales and legends.

PART II.

GUDBRAND AND HIS WIFE.

There was once a man called Gudbrand, who lived in a lonely little farm-house on a remote hillside.  From this circumstance he got the name among his neighbors of Gudbrand of the Hill.

Now, you must know that Gudbrand had an excellent wife, as sometimes happens to a man.  But the rarest thing about it was, that Gudbrand knew the value of such a treasure; and so the two lived in perfect harmony, enjoying their own happiness, and giving themselves no concern about either wealth or the lapse of years.  No matter what Gudbrand might do, his wife had foreseen and desired that very thing; so that her good man could not touch or change or move anything about the house without her coming forward to thank him for having divined and forestalled her wishes.