ds with all their delights
and wonders, but also, besides many hounds, a number of strange beasts,
and other pastimes such as a town child knows little of.

But what I most loved was the only son of my uncle and aunt Waldstromer,
for whose dog I kept my cake letters; for though Cousin Gotz was older
than I by eleven years, he nevertheless did not scorn me, but whenever
I asked him to show me this or that, or teach me some light woodland
craft, he would leave his elders to please me.

When I was six years old I went to the forest one day in a scarlet
velvet hood, and after that he ever called me his little "Red
riding-hood," and I liked to be called so; and of all the boys and lads
I ever met among my brothers' friends or others I deemed none could
compare with Gotz; my guileless heart was so wholly his that I always
mentioned his name in my little prayers.

Till I was nine we had gone out into the forest three or four times in
each year to pass some weeks; but after this I was sent to school, and
as Cousin Maud took it much to heart, because she knew that my father
had set great store by good learning, we paid such visits more rarely;
and indeed, the strict mistress who ruled my teaching would never have
allowed me to break through my learning for pastime's sake.

Sister Margaret, commonly called the Carthusian nun, was the name of the
singular woman who was chosen to be my teacher. She was at once the most
pious and learned soul living; she was Prioress of a Carthusian nunnery
and had written ten large choirbooks, besides others. Though the rule of
her order forbade discourse, she was permitted to teach.

Oh, how I trembled when Cousin Maud first took me to the convent.

As a rule my tongue was never still, unless it were when Herdegen sang
to me, or thought aloud, telling me his dreams of what he would do when
he had risen to be chancellor, or captain-in chief of the Imperial army,
and had found a count's or a prince's daughter to carry home to his
grand castle. Besides, the wild wood was a second home to me, and now
I was shut up in a convent where the silence about me crushed me like a
too tight bodice. The walls of the vast antechamber, where I was left
to wait, were covered with various texts in Latin, and several times
repeated were these words under a skull.

"Bitter as it is to live a Carthusian, it is right sweet to die one."

There was a crucifix in a shrine, and so much bright red blood flowed
from t