n the Sistine Chapel.
She usually came over to us at twilight in the long winter evenings,
with a red cloth wound around her head, and stayed until the lights were
lit. Then she told us stories of witches and goblins, that sounded more
impressive from her lips than from any other. We heard of the Blocksberg
and the witches-Sabbath; the broomstick, so contemptible in appearance,
acquired a weird importance, and the dark hole in the chimney, which in
every house, and therefore in ours also, can be misused in such
malignant fashion by the powers of hell and their handmaids, inspired us
with dread. I can still remember perfectly the impression made upon me
by the story of the wicked miller's wife, who transformed herself at
night into a cat, and how I consoled myself with the fact that in the
end she did indeed receive due punishment for this wicked prank. The
cat, namely, when once starting out on her nightly walk, had a paw
chopped off by the miller's apprentice, who thought she looked
suspicious, and the next day the miller's wife lay in bed with a bloody
right arm minus a hand.

When the light was lit we usually went over to neighbor Ohl's, and in
his room we certainly felt more at ease than in Meta's company. Neighbor
Ohl was a man whom I have never seen cross, no matter how often he had
occasion to be so. With an empty stomach, indeed with what in his case
meant more, an empty pipe, he danced, sang, and whistled something for
us whenever we came; and in spite of his considerably reddened
nose--which, according to a tale of my mother's, I once wished for
longingly when looking up at him while being danced upon his knees--and
in spite of the felt cap tapering to a point, which he wore continually,
his always friendly, merry face still gleams before me like a star.
There had been a time when he was the only mason in the place and the
employer of from twenty to thirty journeymen, of whom many later set up
as masters and took the work away from him. At that time, so it was said
later, he could have assured himself a future free from care if he had
not visited the bowling alley too often, and loved a good glass of wine
too well. But whoever bore evil fortune as he did, could not be
reproached for careless enjoyment of the good. I cannot think of him
without emotion; how would it be possible for me to do sot He once, at
fair-time, presented my brother and me with a kettle-drum and a trumpet
which he had, with the greatest di