“John Harnisch, the great Nichus is courting your wife, who has been changed into an Undine three months ago; she will not listen to him, and he wants you to tell him how he must manage to please her.”
The notary thought it was a bad dream, uttered a sigh as he thought of his deceased wife, and fell asleep once more. But a chilly hand resting upon his breast waked him once more, and the voice said:—
“John Harnisch, speak, speak promptly and be sincere, or you shall never sleep again.”
John Harnisch resisted for some time longer, but a red flame dimly lighted up his alcove and he saw a row of green teeth and scaly cheek bones. Thoroughly frightened, he said what he could.
“Thanks!” cries Nixcobt, and breaks out into a far sounding laugh.
We might fill folios with all the lugubrious jokes of this messenger of the dead, but we will abstain. Besides, Nixcobt has lost all respect now-a-days. He is no longer seen gliding along the houses in towns or slipping through the rows in the vineyards.
We might in like manner tell a vast number of interesting stories and quote endless Lieder and ballads, which treat of Nixen and Undines. For there are, besides, Undines of rivers and Undines of lakes, and there are even some in the ocean; in Germany all watercourses, down to the tiniest rills, have their Undines. Only day before yesterday I was walking on the banks of the Rhine; only yesterday on those of the Moselle, This morning, wandering about at haphazard I encountered a brook, a mere rill, which attracted me by its sweet murmurs. I followed it, followed it for two hours. I happened to have nothing else to do.
My tiny rill, a mere infant so near its source, was turning and twisting in the thick grass and seemed to try and walk on all fours as little children do. Farther down it had become a little girl, having increased in size and bulk; it now wandered hither and thither, carelessly, capriciously, leaping merrily over the rocks and carrying off here a flower and there a flower that grew on its banks, no doubt for the purpose of making a bouquet. Still farther on, I witnessed its marriage with a big brook that had come down all the way from the mountains; it was a young woman now, a wife, and walked soberly through the plain, like a prudent stream, bearing already boats on its surface and preparing to join an elder sister, the Moselle. Soon I had to cross it on a bridge; on this same bridge four Prussian soldiers were busy watching the water as it flowed by, no doubt in the hope of catching a fair Undine as she was stealthily slipping down the river. As for myself, I had in vain traced the unknown little river from its birth all along its banks, under the thick shelter of willows and alder bushes; neither day before yesterday on the Rhine, nor yesterday on the Moselle, nor today, did I ever find a trace of a Nymph, a Nix, or an Undine!
What must be my conclusion?
A thief who had been brought before a police court and was there confronted with two persons who had seen him steal, said:—