It chanced, moreover, that on this very day Henry was bitten by a strange dog, and as there was no knowing whether the beast might not be mad they made young Catsrider swallow a large pill of very pungent spices as an antidote; and no doubt this too had an inflammatory effect upon his blood.
Add to this that the old master on this particular evening gave a great feast to all his apprentices, at which they first drank heavy old beer and then strong red wine. The apprentices on this occasion mocked Henry unmercifully, and called him a milksop, fit only to be stuck up in a corner and beaten with a spindle by his wife. The wine mounted to his head, and the blood and the gibes did the rest. The feast was no sooner over than Henry went straight to the door of Michal's chamber, set his shoulders against it, and tore it off its hinges.
Next morning, pretty Michal had a blue mark under one eye and a wheal on her forehead, and the precious amulet, the amulet she had received from her father as a bridal gift, was no longer round her neck.
"What's the good of you," cried she, addressing the amulet, "if you cannot defend me? How can you save me from the Black Death when you cannot save me from the hand of man?"
Then she took the dove which she had brought with her from home, and said to it:
"It is all your fault! Why was my heart so soft on your account, why had I not the courage to kill you there and then? If I had wrung your neck, plucked your feathers, stuck you on a spit and carved you, I should not be here now! Fly home! Take back the amulet! I'll tie it round your neck. Take it to my father! May the amulet defend you on the way from vultures and hawks, may it preserve my father from ever feeling such heavy woe as I am feeling here."
With that, she took the amulet and fastened it beneath the dove's wings with the ribbon, in such a way as to show that it had not been unloosed but torn from her neck. Then she opened the window and let the dove go.
The dove cooed, flew into the air, and Michal saw it no more.
And pray what became of the dove? Only this. On the same day it came home to Keszmár and tapped at the window, while the great scholar sat poring over his folios. The learned Professor Fröhlich, much amazed, admitted the winged messenger through the casement, and still greater grew his astonishment when he perceived beneath her wings the precious amulet, tied by a ribbon which had evidently been violently torn. Being a very great and learned mathematician, he naturally concluded therefrom that some great evil must have befallen his daughter; whereupon, without thinking of consulting the heavenly bodies as to whether this was a lucky day for traveling, without waiting for a caravan to pass by that way and pick him up, he took his hat and stick and went off at once and alone to seek his daughter.