"And what else did you expect?" queried the wizard, gazing through his unglazed spectacles upon the Mayor. "Mark you, Mr. Mayor, it is the business of wizards to make sage observations. You might as well try to purchase a diamond necklace of a green-grocer as look for unwise remarks from a professional wizard."
"I'll test his powers of prophecy now," said Hans to me, in a whisper.
"Do," I replied. "I shall be delighted, for I never met a real prophet before."
"Ah, Herr Wizard," said Hans, addressing Von Hatzfeldt, "what do you think about the weather?"
"It is very fair—now," replied the wizard.
"Now, eh?" said Hans. "Then you think it will not always be so?"
"No," replied the wizard, glancing up into the heavens. "No. To you there is nothing in the skies to foretell a change, but to me there is much. Before the winter is over, Hans Pumpernickel, we shall have snow. I read it in the stars."
"Stars?" I cried. "By day?"
"And why not?" returned the wizard. "Do you think because you do not see them that therefore the stars are all destroyed?"
To this I had no answer, and before I could recover myself Fritz von Hatzfeldt had passed on.