"I cannot tell how it is with me to-day," said one stranger to his friend. "I am filled with fear, and my teeth chatter, and it creeps like fire in my veins. If only some misfortune does not meet us!"
"Thou art very foolish," replied the other. "Is it not the eighteenth time that we have been here, and we have always known how to turn and shuffle that the lot fell on the accompanying third person? And where could we have found a better companion than that fellow there, out of whose eyes the most charming simplicity and stupidity look, so that a child might deceive him?"
He would have added more, but Schlosser, who went on before, uttered a cry of horror, and the hearts of the two friends sank within them, although what they saw they had seen already eighteen times.
On the fatal beam over the foaming water stood the devil himself, with all the terrors peculiar to his dark majesty. Great burning eyes rolled like wheels of flaming fire in his awful face, a shaggy-haired hide clothed the spirit of the bottomless pit, and the fearful claws were extended to seize his prey.
With trembling hand the eldest of the two strangers produced the cards; but however falsely he shuffled them the death-card fell to him, and he began to quake, and grew as pale as the chalk of the wall.
Under the pretext that something had been omitted, the stranger shuffled again; but, to his terror, the death-lot fell, not upon Schlosser, but his own friend.
"The third time it will surely fall on the fellow," thought the stranger to himself, and began under all sorts of excuses to shuffle again.
The foul fiend raised himself to his greatest height, breathing flames of fire from mouth and nostrils, and cried in a hollow, smothered voice, like the sound of distant thunder: "Only once more can ye draw lots, no more. Over that person there," pointing to Schlosser, "I have no power; he is defended, by a plant which he carries on his person, from every danger!"
The two old sinners turned paler than ever, and looked despairingly at each other; but the devil waved his hand, and they drew lots for the third time. The lot fell on him on whom it had fallen the first time.
Like a tempest Satan threw himself on the despairing man, seized him with his claws, rose with him in the air, and tore him in pieces.