Project Gutenberg's Specimens of German Romance, by Carl Franz van der Velde

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Title: Specimens of German Romance
Vol. I. The Patricians

Author: Carl Franz van der Velde

Editor: George Soan

Release Date: April 20, 2010 [EBook #32070]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPECIMENS OF GERMAN ROMANCE ***

Produced by Charles Bowen from page scans provided by the Web Archive

Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan Source:
http://www.archive.org/details/specimensofgerma01soaniala
2. Footnotes are at the end of the book.

VOL. I.

THE PATRICIANS.

_From the German of_

C. F. VAN DER VELDE.

SPECIMENS

OF

GERMAN ROMANCE.

SELECTED AND TRANSLATED FROM
VARIOUS AUTHORS.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. I.

LONDON:
PRINTED FOR GEO. B. WHITTAKER,
AVE-MARIA-LANE.

MDCCCXXVI.

THE PATRICIANS.

It was in the year 1568, on the 17th of May, old style, that Althea,
the widow of Netz of Bogendorf, sate in her apartments at Schweidnitz.
The mourning veil still flowed about her pale beautiful face, while her
blue eyes gazed through their tears with melancholy tenderness on the
only pledge of a brief yet happy union, the four years' old Henry, who
sate upon her knees, and in childish sport was trying to pull the
golden locks of his mother from under her widows' cap. Before her stood
her old uncle, Seifried von Schindel, and, while he held the full
goblet in his hand, exhausted himself in consolations to lessen the
anguish of his beloved niece. With good-humoured rebuke he exclaimed,
"It is, no doubt, praise-worthy in your zeal to grieve for the loss of
your husband; I myself can't bear those widows, who, l