‘For all that, it is of wax,’ replied Peter. ‘A genuine heart does not writhe like that. I have mine still in my breast. No! you are no magician.’
‘But I will prove it to you,’ cried the former angrily. ‘You shall feel that it is your heart.’ He took it, opened Peter’s waistcoat, took the stone from his breast, and held it up. Then taking the heart, he breathed on it, and set it carefully in its proper place, and immediately Peter felt how it beat, and could rejoice again. ‘How do you feel now?’ asked Michel, smiling.
‘True enough, you were right,’ replied Peter, taking carefully the little cross from his pocket. ‘I should never have believed such things could be done.’
‘You see I know something of witchcraft, do I not? But, come, I will now replace the stone again.’
‘Gently, Herr Michel,’ cried Peter, stepping backwards, and holding up the cross, ‘mice are caught with bacon, and this time you have been deceived,’ and immediately he began to repeat the prayers that came into his mind.
Now Michel became less and less, fell to the ground, and writhed like a worm, groaning and moaning, and all the hearts round began to beat, and became convulsed, so that it sounded like a clock-maker’s workshop.
Peter was terrified, his mind was quite disturbed; he ran from the house, and, urged by the anguish of the moment, climbed up a steep rock, for he heard Michel get up, stamping and raving, and denouncing curses on him. When he reached the top, he ran towards the Tannenbühl; a dreadful thunderstorm came on; lightning flashed around him, splitting the trees, but he reached the precincts of the Little Glass Man in safety.
His heart beat joyfully—only because it did beat; but now he looked back with horror on his past life, as he did on the thunderstorm that was destroying the beautiful forest on his right and left. He thought of his wife, a beautiful, good woman, whom he had murdered from avarice; he appeared to himself an outcast from mankind, and wept bitterly as he reached the hill of the Little Glass Man.
The Schatzhauser was sitting under a pine-tree, and was smoking a small pipe; but he looked more serene than before.
‘Why do you weep, Peter?’ asked he; ‘have you not recovered your heart? Is the cold one still in your breast?’