is friend Faustus was desperately in love with the beautiful
mayoress, and that for his sake only he would do it; and if the mayoress
would retire with Faustus for a few moments,--which would be entirely
unobserved amid the noise and confusion of a festival,--he should deliver
into her hand the patent of nobility."

Thereupon the Devil hastened to Faustus, informed him of what had
happened, and gave him the letter of nobility, with certainty of success.
Faustus doubted, and the Devil laughed at his doubts.

The mayor remained in his cabinet almost petrified. The sudden glitter
of such unexpected happiness was at once so clouded by an odious and
detestable condition, that he determined upon rejecting it. But all at
once Ambition blew into his ear: "Ho! ho! Mr. Mayor; to be dubbed a
nobleman at once, and in such an off-hand manner, as the saying is, and
thereby to be placed on a footing with the proudest of thy foes, and to
raise thy voice in the council like a trumpet, and appear among those
there like a man whom, on account of his services, his imperial majesty
will exalt above the heads of all!"

Another feeling softly whispered--

"Uh! uh! with my own knowledge and consent to be thus disgraced! But
then, again, who will know it? and what is there in the whole affair? I
receive a certain good in lieu of what has long ceased to have any charms
for me. The evil consists in the idea alone, and it will be a secret
between me and my wife. But, stating the case fairly, can I arrive at so
high a distinction at a cheaper rate? Will it not be a nail in the
alderman's coffin; and what will the citizens not say when they see that
his imperial majesty knows how to value me? Shall I not get every thing
into my power, and revenge myself on those who have thwarted and
contradicted me? Ho! ho! Mr. Mayor; be no fool; seize fortune by the
forelock. Man is only what he appears in the eyes of the world, and no
one asks the nobleman how he became so. But there is my wife; she will
set herself against my advancement, for I well know her Saxon prudery."

At that very moment she entered the room, eager to learn from her husband
what the magnificent stranger had confided to him in private. He looked
at her with a roguish leer, but still with some degree of bashfulness.

_Mayor_. Well, my chick, suppose I were to make thee a noblewoman
to-day?

_Mayoress_. Then, duck, the wives of all the citizens and magistrates
would swoo