"GOOD FRIEND AND VASSAL,"
"Touching your foul accusation respecting your two brats, and my bewitching them to death, I shall only say you must be mad. I have long thought that pride would turn your brain: now I see it has been done. If Bartel has got a beard, send for soap and shave him. As to yourself, I counsel you to come to Marienfliess to old Kathe, she knows how to turn the brain right again with a wooden bowl. Pour hot water therein, three times boiled, set the bowl on your head, and over the bowl an inverted pot; then, as the water is drawn up into the empty pot, so will the madness be drawn up out of your brain into the wooden bowl, and all will be right again. It is a good receipt; I counsel you to try it. She only desires you to kiss her hand in return. Such is the advice of your feudal lady and seigneuress,
"SIDONIA BORK."
His Highness had hardly finished reading the letter, when Bishop
Francis cried out—
"What the devil, brother, hast thou made the murderous dragon a prioress?"
But his Highness knew nothing of it, and wondered much likewise. Whereupon the state prosecutor told them how it came about, and that poor Dorothea Stettin had been talked out of her situation by the dragon, as was all here to be seen set down in full in the indictment; but, as the case was not now under discussion, he would pass it over, although great quarrels and scandal prevailed in the convent in consequence, and poor Dorothea lay sick, earnestly desiring to be restored to her prioret.
Bishop Francis now grew yet more angry—
"Give the witch a prioret in hell," he cried. "What would his dear brother do, now that the proofs were in his hands?"
To which Duke Philip answered mildly—
"Dear Fra, think on my symbol, C. & R." (that is, Christo et Reipublicae, for Christ and the State). "Let us not be over-hasty. Suppose that Dr. Constantinus should first dissect this poor infant, and see what really caused its death."