uences of his folly. She pitied him from her heart; she
admired, too, the fortitude with which he endured such pain and
indignity; but she had his good in view.

She knew that, as a child is taught to know better another time by one
good flogging, so her husband, who was nothing but a child in mind, must
be cured by the same remedy.

"The loss of a little blood, as our leeches say, is good for the health
occasionally," remarked Clothilde. "Besides, as your knighthood is well
aware, a knight, whose trade it is to shed blood, must not wince if now
and then a little of his own is shed."

"How thinkest thou, Sir Knight," asked Carlotta, "that a back _sanglant_
would look in thine escutcheon?"

These, and such like gibes were thrown at Hans, who treated them all
with silent contempt.

At length Bertha, observing by the countenance of her spouse that he had
had enough, thought it high time that the tables should be turned, and
the spectators punished for their barbarity, so she whispered thus in
her husband's ear:--

"I am with thee. Now that thou hast suffered the consequences of thy
disobedience, take thy revenge upon thine enemies."

So saying, she touched his fetters with her wand, and they snapped.

Hans needed not this prompting. Finding himself free, his suppressed
wrath having increased his natural strength to that of a Titan, he
sprang up the steps of the amphitheatre, and seizing the throat of the
Princess Clothilde with his right hand and that of her sister with his
left, he squeezed them with such force, that it was a wonder both were
not killed outright. However, they certainly would have been, had not
one of the lords, whom Hans recognised as the same false lord who had
invited him to his house, and afterwards drugged him, instantly
interfered.

Hans left go the throats of the princesses, who fell, to all
appearances, dead, and who did not recover till long after, and, seizing
the sword of the false lord, which he had drawn against him, he snapped
it in two across his knee, and threw the pieces into the arena. Then,
seizing the lord himself by the collar and by the seat of his hose, he
flung him with such violence over the heads of the people, that he fell
headforemost after his sword, and his brains were dashed out.

Shouts of "Murder!" and "Treason!" were heard on all sides.

"Seize the miscreant!"

The four men who had led Hans before the princesses came forward, and
would have secured him, but