“Drive the bewitching vision from your mind, Sir Heinz.  You don’t know —­but I could tell you some tales about women who walk in their sleep by moonlight.”

“Well?” asked Heinz eagerly.

“As a maiden,” Biberli continued impressively, with the pious intention of guarding his master from injury, “the somnambulist merely runs the risk of falling from the roof, or whatever accident may happen to a sleepwalker; but if she enters the estate of holy matrimony, the evil power which has dominion over her sooner or later transforms her at midnight into a troll, which seizes her husband’s throat in his sleep and strangles him.”

“Nursery tales!” cried Heinz angrily, but Biberli answered calmly: 

“It can make no difference to you what occurs in the case of such possessed women, for henceforward the Ortlieb house will be closed against you.  And—­begging your pardon—­it is fortunate.  For, my lord, the horse mounted by the first Schorlin—­the chaplain showed it to you in the picture—­came from the ark in which Noah saved it with the other animals from the deluge, and the first Lady Schorlin whom the family chronicles mention was a countess.  Your ancestresses came from citadels and castles; no Schorlin ever yet brought his bride from a tradesman’s house.  You, the proudest of them all, will scarcely think of making such an error, though it is true—­”

“Ernst Ortlieb, spite of his trade, is a man of knightly lineage, to whom the king of arms opens the lists at every tournament!” exclaimed Heinz indignantly.

“In the combat with blunt weapons,” replied Biberli contemptuously.

“Nay, for the jousts and single combat,” cried Heinz excitedly.  “The Emperor Frederick himself dubbed Herr Ernst a knight.”

“You know best,” replied Biberli modestly.  But his coat of arms, like his entry, smells of cloves and pepper.  Here is another, however, who, like your first ancestress, has a countess’s title, and who has a right—­ My name isn’t Biberli if your lady mother at home would not be more than happy were I to inform her that the Countess von Montfort and the darling of her heart, which you are: 

“The name of Montfort and what goes with it,” Heinz interrupted, “would surely please those at home.  But the rest!  Where could a girl be found who, setting aside Cordula’s kind heart, would be so great a contrast to my mother in every respect?”

“Stormy mornings merge into quiet days,” said the servant.  “Everything depends, my lord, upon the heart of which you speak so slightingly—­the heart and, even above that, upon the blood.  ‘Help is needed there,’ cried the kind heart just now, and then the blood did its ‘devoir’.  The act followed the desire as the sound follows the blow of the hammer, the thunder the flash of lightning.  Well for the castle that is ruled by such a mistress!  I am only the servant, and respect commands me to curb my tongue; but to-day I had news from home through the Provost Werner, of Lucerne, whom I knew at Stansstadt.  I meant to tell you of it over the wine at the Thirsty Troopers, but that accursed note and the misfortune which followed prevented.  It will not make either of us more cheerful, but whoever is ordered by the leech to drink gall and wormwood does wisely to swallow the dose at one gulp.  Do you wish to empty the cup now?”