‘Pray with me,’ said Margarita.

The two knelt at the foot of the bride-bed, and prayed very different prayers, but to the same end.  That done, Aunt Lisbeth helped undress the White Rose, and trembled, and told a sad nuptial anecdote of the Castle, and put her little shrivelled hand on Margarita’s heart, and shrieked.

‘Child! it gallops!’ she cried.

‘’Tis happiness,’ said Margarita, standing in her hair.

‘May it last only!’ exclaimed Aunt Lisbeth.

‘It will, aunty!  I am humble:  I am true’; and the fair girl gathered the frill of her nightgown.

‘Look not in the glass,’ said Lisbeth; ’not to-night!  Look, if you can, to-morrow.’

She smoothed the White Rose in her bed, tucked her up, and kissed her, leaving her as a bud that waits for sunshine.

CONCLUSION

The shadow of Monk Gregory was seen no more in Cologne.  He entered the Calendar, and ranks next St. Anthony.  For three successive centuries the towns of Rhineland boasted his visits in the flesh, and the conqueror of Darkness caused dire Rhenish feuds.

The Tailed Infernal repeated his famous Back-blow on Farina.  The youth awoke one morning and beheld warehouses the exact pattern of his own, displaying flasks shaped even as his own, and a Farina to right and left of him.  In a week, they were doubled.  A month quadrupled them.  They increased.

‘Fame and Fortune,’ mused Farina, ’come from man and the world:  Love is from heaven.  We may be worthy, and lose the first.  We lose not love unless unworthy.  Would ye know the true Farina?  Look for him who walks under the seal of bliss; whose darling is for ever his young sweet bride, leading him from snares, priming his soul with celestial freshness.  There is no hypocrisy can ape that aspect.  Least of all, the creatures of the Damned!  By this I may be known.’

Seven years after, when the Goshawk came into Cologne to see old friends, and drink some of Gottlieb’s oldest Rudesheimer, he was waylaid by false Farinas; and only discovered the true one at last, by chance, in the music-gardens near the Rhine, where Farina sat, having on one hand Margarita, and at his feet three boys and one girl, over whom both bent lovingly, like the parent vine fondling its grape bunches in summer light.

     Etext editor’s bookmarks: 

     A generous enemy is a friend on the wrong side
     All are friends who sit at table
     Be what you seem, my little one
     Bed was a rock of refuge and fortified defence
     Civil tongue and rosy smiles sweeten even sour wine
     Dangerous things are uttered after the third glass
     Everywhere the badge of subjection is a poor stomach
     Face betokening the perpetual smack of lemon
     Gratitude never was a woman’s gift
     It was harder to be near and not close