e as usual. All at once the fire
blazed up again, and it was nothing else than the sparkling eyes of the
white snake. She played about his feet again, allowed him to stroke her,
and gazed at him as wistfully as if she was going to speak. It must have
been almost midnight when the snake crept back to her nest under the
stone, and did not reappear while Paertel was playing. As he took the
instrument from his mouth and put it in his pocket and prepared to go
home, the leaves of the lime-tree rustled in the breeze so strangely
that it sounded like a human voice, and he thought he heard the
following words repeated several times:

"Thin-shelled is the egg of Fortune,
And the heart is full of sorrow;
Venture not to spoil your fortune."

Thereupon he experienced such a painful longing that his heart was like
to break, and yet he did not know himself what he pined for. He began to
weep bitterly, and lamented, "What does the lucky egg avail me, when no
happiness is permitted me in this world? I have felt from childhood that
I was unfit to mix with men, for they do not understand me, and I do not
understand them. What causes pleasure to them is painful to me, while I
myself know not what could make me happy, and how then should others
know it? Riches and poverty stood together as my sponsors, and therefore
nothing will go right with me."

Suddenly it became as bright around him as if the mid-day sun was
shining on the lime-tree and the rock, and he could not open his eyes
for a time, until he had got used to the light. Then he beheld a lovely
female figure sitting beside him on the stone, clad in snow-white
raiment, as if an angel had flown down from heaven. The maiden's voice
sounded sweeter to him than the song of the nightingale as she addressed
him. "Dear youth, fear nothing, but give heed to the prayer of an
unhappy girl. I am imprisoned in a miserable dungeon, and if you do not
pity me, I can never hope to escape. O dear youth, take pity on me, and
do not cast me off! I am the daughter of a king of the East, possessed
of fabulous riches in gold and silver, but all this avails me nothing,
for an enchanter has compelled me to live under this stone in the form
of a white snake. I have lived thus for many centuries, without ever
growing older. Although I never injured any human being, all fled before
my shape, as soon as they beheld me. You are the only living being who
did not fly at my approach; you have even a