a sharper insight into
the realm of spirits than your overwise men. Think on Balaam's awful
history. It would not be the first time that a horse shied when he was
bearing his master to his ruin. Who knows whether it is well that you
have just now rode into the town?"

"Herr von Schindel is the faithful Eckart, and warns every one," cried
Rasselwitz with forced laughter, and seized the goblet to wash down his
anxiety, while Netz exclaimed--"Are we not at last, then, to sit down
regularly, and fetch up our lost dinner-time?"

"Do so, good cousin, and take my place," replied Tausdorf, who since
Schindel's last words had grown unusually grave and gloomy: "My
honoured guests will easily excuse me if I leave them for my bed: I
should make a sorry host to-day, for my head is somewhat stunned and
dizzy from the fall, and repose will be the best thing for me."

He bowed, and left the company. The faithful Althea anxiously followed
him.

"A tedious melancholy feast for a welcome," muttered Netz.

The guests looked at each other with disturbed countenance. A painful
silence spread over the whole party, and the old Schindel put his
finger to his nose, and said, "I keep to it still; this adventure is a
very doubtful omen: God turn all to the best!"

* * * * *

The two brothers, Christopher and Francis, had come to see the splendid
aloe, which was at the Dutch nurseryman's in the park, and was then
unfolding all the glory of its blossoms. Both were not a little
astonished at meeting here, for at other times the way of the one was
regularly not that of the other. Bareheaded, and with all the respect
due to the rich Patricians, the gardener opened to them the door of the
particular green-house, in which stood the giant plant. From the midst
of enormous prickly leaves the stem rose up like a tree, to almost
three times a man's height; from that again a multitude of branches had
sprouted perpendicularly, each of which bore a multitude of colossal
flower-tufts, so that many thousand flowers showed themselves together,
offering to the astonished eye the appearance of an immense nosegay.

"This splendid aloe, called also _Agave Americana_," said the gardener,
haranguing in a monotonous tone, and repeating the same thing for the
hundredth time,--"this splendid aloe has come to Germany from the new
world through Spain; it reaches a very great age, sometimes a hundred
years, flowers only once in its