Dietrich gulped and winked, like a patient recovering
wry-faced from an abhorred potion.
‘We have warned you, Fraulein Groschen!’
he exclaimed. ’It now becomes our duty
to see that you are not snared.’
Margarita reddened, and returned: ’You
are kind. But I am a Christian maiden and not
a Pagan soldan, and I do not require a body of tawny
guards at my heels.’
Thereat she flung back to her companions, and began
staining her pretty mouth with grapes anew.
Fair maids will have their hero in history. Siegfried
was Margarita’s chosen. She sang of Siegfried
all over the house. ’O the old days of
Germany, when such a hero walked!’ she sang.
‘And who wins Margarita,’ mused Farina,
’happier than Siegfried, has in his arms Brunhild
and Chrimhild together!’
Crowning the young girl’s breast was a cameo,
and the skill of some cunning artist out of Welschland
had wrought on it the story of the Drachenfels.
Her bosom heaved the battle up and down.
This cameo was a north star to German manhood, but
caused many chaste expressions of abhorrence from
Aunt Lisbeth, Gottlieb’s unmarried sister, who
seemed instinctively to take part with the Dragon.
She was a frail-fashioned little lady, with a face
betokening the perpetual smack of lemon, and who reigned
in her brother’s household when the good wife
was gone. Margarita’s robustness was beginning
to alarm and shock Aunt Lisbeth’s sealed stock
of virtue.
‘She must be watched, such a madl as that,’
said Aunt Lisbeth. ’Ursula! what limbs
she has!’
Margarita was watched; but the spy being neither foe
nor friend, nothing was discovered against her.
This did not satisfy Aunt Lisbeth, whose own suspicion
was her best witness. She allowed that Margarita
dissembled well.
‘But,’ said she to her niece, ’though
it is good in a girl not to flaunt these naughtinesses
in effrontery, I care for you too much not to say—Be
what you seem, my little one!’
‘And that am I!’ exclaimed Margarita,
starting up and towering.
‘Right good, my niece,’ Lisbeth squealed;
’but now Frau Groschen lies in God’s acre,
you owe your duty to me, mind! Did you confess
last week?’
‘From beginning to end,’ replied Margarita.
Aunt Lisbeth fixed pious reproach on Margarita’s
cameo.
‘And still you wear that thing?’
‘Why not?’ said Margarita.
’Girl! who would bid you set it in such a place
save Satan? Oh, thou poor lost child! that the
eyes of the idle youths may be drawn there! and thou
become his snare to others, Margarita! What was
that Welsh wandering juggler but the foul fiend himself,
mayhap, thou maiden of sin! They say he has been
seen in Cologne lately. He was swarthy as Satan
and limped of one leg. Good Master in heaven,
protect us! it was Satan himself I could swear!’
