Page:Legends of Rubezahl, and Other Tales (1845).djvu/259

ter who feels his credit totter, but wanting the spirit to send in his resignation, postpones it from day to day, till he is overtaken by an ignominious dismissal. Could he have resolved to break at once with his fickle mistress, he might perhaps have so managed as even now to have concealed his discomfiture and have turned the tables completely on the lady. There was the round, rustic Thuringian, Count Rupert’s cousin, who might have been made excellent use of by the accomplished Ulric, in just the same way in which Lucretia meant to employ Count Rupert himself; but all his skill in love manœuvring was thrown out by the deep passion which had now taken possession of his heart; it had happened to him as sometimes befals actors who on the stage have to make love frequently to the same person: the sentiment he at first but feigned became a strong, an all-absorbing reality. The moth may fly at the candle many and many a time with impunity, but it is at last caught in the flame, and, despite its convulsive struggles, is only freed by death. The appearance even of so contemptible a rival as Rupert served to open Ulric’s eyes to the violence of his own passion, and the entire absence of it on the part of Lucretia. In vain, like the wounded tiger of the fable, did he endeavour to wrench out the arrow that had pierced him; he but aggravated his own agonies