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Page 14
"You must not speak so," said the old fisherman, crossing himself.
His wife did the same, without saying a word, and Undine, while her
eye sparkled with delight, looked at the knight and said, "The best
of the story is, however, that as yet they have not roasted you! Go
on, now, you beautiful knight."
The knight then went on with his adventures. "My horse was so wild,
that he well-nigh rushed with me against limbs and trunks of trees.
He was dripping with sweat through terror, heat, and the violent
straining of his muscles. Still he refused to slacken his career.
At last, altogether beyond my control, he took his course directly up
a stony steep, when suddenly a tall white man flashed before me, and
threw himself athwart the way my mad steed was taking. At this
apparition he shuddered with new affright, and stopped trembling.
I took this chance of recovering my command of him, and now for the
first time perceived that my deliverer, so far from being a white
man, was only a brook of silver brightness, foaming near me in its
descent from the hill, while it crossed and arrested my horse's
course with its rush of waters."
"Thanks, thanks, dear brook!" cried Undine, clapping her little
hands. But the old man shook his head, and looked down in deep
thought.
"Hardly had I well settled myself in my saddle, and got the reins in
my grasp again," Huldbrand pursued, "when a wizard-like dwarf of a
man was already standing at my side, diminutive and ugly beyond
conception, his complexion of a brownish-yellow, and his nose
scarcely smaller than the rest of him together. The fellow's mouth
was slit almost from ear to ear, and he showed his teeth with a
grinning smile of idiot courtesy, while he overwhelmed me with bows
and scrapes innumerable. The farce now becoming excessively irksome,
I thanked him in the fewest words I could well use, turned about my
still trembling charger, and purposed either to seek another
adventure, or, should I meet with none, to take my way back to the
city; for the sun, during my wild chase, had passed the meridian, and
was now hastening toward the west. But this villain of a dwarf
sprang at the same instant, and, with a turn as rapid as lightning,
stood before my horse again. 'Clear the way there!' I cried
fiercely; 'the beast is wild, and will make nothing of running over
you.'
"'Ay, ay,' cried the imp with a snarl, and snorting out a laugh still
more frightfully idiotic; 'pay me, first pay what you owe me. I
stopped your fine little nag for you; without my help, both you and
he would be now sprawling below there in that stony ravine. Hu! from
what a horrible plunge I've saved you!'
"'Well, don't make any more faces,' said I, 'but take your money and
be off, though every word you say is false. It was the brook there,
you miserable thing, and not you, that saved me,' and at the same
time I dropped a piece of gold into his wizard cap, which he had
taken from his head while he was begging before me.
"I then trotted off and left him, but he screamed after me; and on a
sudden, with inconceivable quickness, he was close by my side. I
started my horse into a gallop. He galloped on with me, though it
seemed with great difficulty, and with a strange movement, half
ludicrous and half horrible, forcing at the same time every limb and
feature into distortion, he held up the gold piece and screamed at
every leap, 'Counterfeit! false! false coin! counterfeit!' and such
was the strange sound that issued from his hollow breast, you would
have supposed that at every scream he must have tumbled upon the
ground dead. All this while his disgusting red tongue hung lolling
from his mouth.
"I stopped bewildered, and asked, 'What do you mean by this
screaming? Take another piece of gold, take two, but leave me.'
"He then began again his hideous salutations of courtesy, and snarled
out as before, 'Not gold, it shall not be gold, my young gentleman.
I have too much of that trash already, as I will show you in no
time.'
"At that moment, and thought itself could not have been more
instantaneous, I seemed to have acquired new powers of sight. I
could see through the solid green plain, as if it were green glass,
and the smooth surface of the earth were round as a globe, and within
it I saw crowds of goblins, who were pursuing their pastime and
making themselves merry with silver and gold. They were tumbling and
rolling about, heads up and heads down; they pelted one another in
sport with the precious metals, and with irritating malice blew gold-
dust in one another's eyes. My odious companion ordered the others
to reach him up a vast quantity of gold; this he showed to me with a
laugh, and then flung it again ringing and chinking down the
measureless abyss.
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