should be seeking death.  Something in the dwarf’s tone caused Ferdinand to listen and suddenly to hope for he knew not what miracle.  His eyes gleamed as the dwarf went on to speak of sacks of gold, and when the little creature asked for but a single hair in return he laughed aloud and offered him a hundred.  But the dwarf smiled and shook his head.  The noble bowed with a polite gesture, and as he bent his head the little man reached up and plucked out but one hair, and, lo! a sack of gold straightway appeared.  At this Ferdinand thought that he must be dreaming, but the sack and gold pieces were real enough to the touch, albeit the dwarf had vanished.  Then, in great haste, Ferdinand bought rich and costly clothing and armour, also a snow-white steed caparisoned with steel and purple trappings, spending on these more than twenty sacks of gold, for the dwarf returned to the noble many times and on each occasion gave a sack of gold in exchange for one hair.  At last Ferdinand set out for the tournament, where, besides carrying off the richest prizes and winning the heart of many a fair lady, he attracted the notice of the Emperor, who invited him to stay at his court.

And there the knight resumed his former passions and pleasures, living the wildest of lives and thinking no price too high for careless enjoyment.  And each night, ere the hour of twelve finished striking, the yellow dwarf appeared with a sack of gold, taking his usual payment of only one hair.  This wild life now began to tell upon Ferdinand.  He fell an easy prey to disease, which the doctors could not cure, and to the pricks of a late-roused conscience, which no priests could soothe.  All his wasted past rose before him.  Day and night his manifold sins appeared before him like avenging furies, until at last, frenzied by this double torture of mind and body, he called upon the Devil to aid him in putting an end to his miserable existence, for so helpless was he, he could neither reach nor use a weapon.  Then at his side appeared once more the dwarf, smiling and obliging as usual.  He proffered, not a sack of gold this time, but a rope of woven hair, the hair which he had taken from Ferdinand in exchange for his gold.  In the morning the miserable noble was found hanging by that rope.

Mainz

Mainz, the old Maguntiacum, was the principal fortress on the Upper Rhine in Roman times.  It was here that Crescentius, one of the first preachers of the Christian faith on the Rhine, regarded by local tradition as the pupil of St. Peter and first Archbishop of Mainz, suffered martyrdom in the reign of Trajan in A.D. 103.  He was a centurion in the Twenty-second Legion, which had been engaged under Titus in the destruction of Jerusalem, and it is supposed that he preached the Gospel in Mainz for thirty-three years before his execution.  Here also it was that the famous vision of Constantine, the cross in the sky, was vouchsafed to the Christian conqueror as he went forth to meet the forces of Maxentius.  The field of the Holy Cross in the vicinity of Mainz is still pointed out as the spot where this miracle took place.  The city flourished under the Carlovingians, and was in a high state of prosperity at the time of Bishop Hatto, whose name, as we have seen, has been held up to obloquy in many legends.