d thrust herself into such intimate
relations with the last proprietor of the place (in other respects a
large-hearted and cultivated man) had worked upon him by promising him,
through the exercise of her accursed arts, the fulfilment of his
dearest wishes--unfailing and everlasting happiness in love--and so led
him on to unutterable crime."

"This is an affair for Cyprian," Ottmar said. "He would be as delighted
over the bleeding baby in the marble, and in the old Castellan, as we."
"Well," Theodore went on to say, "although all this affair may be
traceable to foolish fancies--although it may be nothing but a fable
kept up by the people--still, if that strangely-veined slab of marble
is capable, even under the influence of a lively imagination, of
showing the lineaments of a bleeding baby when looked at closely and
carefully, something uncanny must have happened, or the faithful old
servant could not have felt his master's guilt so deeply in his heart,
nor would that strange stone give such a terrible evidence of it."

Ottmar said, replying, "We will take an early opportunity of laying
this matter before Saint Serapion, that we may ascertain exactly how it
stands; but for the time, I think we ought to let witches alone, and go
back to our subject of the 'German Devil,' as to which I would fain say
a word or two. What I am driving at is--that the characteristic German
manner of treating this subject is seen in its truest colour when it is
a question of the Devil's manner of conducting himself in ordinary
everyday life. Whenever he takes part in that, he is thoroughly 'up' in
every description of evil and mischief--in everything that is terrible
and alarming. He is always on the alert to set traps for the good, so
as to lead as many of them as possible over to his own kingdom; but yet
he is a thoroughly fair and honourably-dealing personage, abiding by
his compacts and contracts in the most accurate and punctilious manner.
From this it results that he is often outwitted, so that he appears in
the character of a 'stupid' Devil (and this is not improbably the
origin of the common expression 'stupid devil'); but, besides all this,
the character of the German Satan has a strong tincture of the
burlesque mixed up with the more predominant quality of mind-disturbing
terror--that horror which oppresses the mind and disorganizes it. Now,
the art of portraying the Devil in this distinctively German fashion
seems to be very much