So, turning to him again, he said earnestly: "Drive the bewitching vision from your mind, Sir Heinz.

You don't know--but I could tell you some tales about women who walk in their sleep by moonlight." "Well ?" asked Heinz eagerly.
"As a maiden," Biberli continued impressively, with the pious intention of guarding his master from injury, "the somnambulist merely runs the risk of falling from the roof, or whatever accident may happen to a sleepwalker; but if she enters the estate of holy matrimony, the evil power which has dominion over her sooner or later transforms her at midnight into a troll, which seizes her husband's throat in his sleep and strangles him." "Nursery tales!" cried Heinz angrily, but Biberli answered calmly: "It can make no difference to you what occurs in the case of such possessed women, for henceforward the Ortlieb house will be closed against you.

And--begging your pardon--it is fortunate.

For, my lord, the horse mounted by the first Schorlin--the chaplain showed it to you in the picture--came from the ark in which Noah saved it with the other animals from the deluge, and the first Lady Schorlin whom the family chronicles mention was a countess.

Your ancestresses came from citadels and castles; no Schorlin ever yet brought his bride from a tradesman's house.