band. Keep till I call to you to stop. This ceremony is never omitted at weddings; and signifies that the woman is to rule in her own apartments and serves to sanction and establish her rule."
Pamfila, obedient to her mother for once in her life, did just as the wily old woman told her to do.
As soon as the bridegroom caught sight of the blessed olive branch in his wife's hand he turned to run away. But finding the doors and windows all shut, and every crack stopped up, and seeing no other way of escape but the keyhole, he slipped into it as if it had been a porte-cochère, for, as you must already have guessed, what Aunt Holofernes had expected turned out to be the case. This spruce-looking youth, so red and white, and so soft-spoken, was no less a person than the devil himself, who, taking advantage of the power Aunt Holofernes had given him by her curse, wanted to treat himself to all the pleasures of a wedding-feast.
But this gentleman, though he is said to be no fool, had met a mother-in-law who was his match, and Aunt Holofernes is not the only one of her kind. So hardly had his lordship entered the keyhole when he found himself in a little bottle, which his mother-in-law was holding ready to receive him as he came through. He was no sooner in than the old woman sealed the bottle up. Her son-in-law begged her humbly to give him his liberty. But the devil could not impose on Aunt Holofernes. Off she started With the bottle and its contents, and when she
