"I have carried it about with me, always upon my heart, have squeezed the lines into this locket. I was searched before the authorities at the institution--nothing was found! Ha, ha, it was too well taken care of."
And at the same time she commenced to dance about like a wild woman, holding the locket high in the air. She appeared like one of the Nikobar island girls, who once, when upon his voyage round the world he had been cast upon their shore, surrounded him in such dizzy tumult.
He was fain to confess that Kätchen was no longer the half-witted seal of former days, that a remarkable transformation had taken place, but that her mind, far from having found its proper balance, had now passed from moody absorption into a wandering will-o'-the-wisp-like frenzy.
"And why did you not show this paper to the judges? Its contents are still unknown to me, but I surmise that it might have spared you the long confinement and detention in the institution."
"To be sure; oh, to be sure! I should have been free as the sea-gull in the air; I only needed to press this. Snap! the case would fly open, and they would all have known what they wished. They pressed all around it, too, but the good spring did not move; they believed at last that it was merely a senseless amber ornament and gave it back to me."
"And you preferred to be tortured and locked up?"
"Of course; it was not intended for the judges. Oh, the clever people--judges and doctors! How they exerted themselves; how they thought, and consulted and questioned! And what faces they made over it--it was enough to kill one with laughing! Ha-ha! half-witted Kätchen outwitted them all."
"And who gave you this locket?"
"The man down below, who was so liberal to-day; he dispenses good and evil. Once I brought him safely to shore through a storm that had suddenly arisen, and he rewarded me with this."
"And for whom are these lines destined!"