she was from home. He examined the dice attentively; and it appeared to him that they were not his own. A powerful suspicion seized upon him. Madame Von Schrollshausen had her own gaming circle as well as himself. Without betraying its origin, he had occasionally given her a few specimens of the privilege attached to his dice: and she had pressed him earnestly to allow her the use of them for a single evening. It was true he never parted with them even on going to bed: but it was possible that they might have been changed whilst he was sleeping. The more he brooded upon this suspicion, the more it strengthened: from being barely possible, it became probable: from a probability it ripened into a certainty; and this certainty received the fullest confirmation at this moment when she returned home in the gayest temper, and announced to him that she had been this night overwhelmed with good luck; in proof of which, she poured out upon the table a considerable sum in gold coin. “And now,” she added laughingly, “I care no longer for your dice; nay, to tell you the truth, I would not exchange my own for them.”
Rudolph, now confirmed in his suspicions, demanded the dice—as his property that had been purloined from him. She laughed and refused. He insisted with more vehemence; she retorted with warmth: both parties were irritated: and, at length, in the extremity of his wrath, Rudolph snatched up a knife and stabbed her: the knife pierced her heart: she uttered a single sob—was convulsed for a moment—and expired. “Cursed accident!” he exclaimed, when it clearly appeared, on examination, that the dice which she had in her purse were not those which he suspected himself to have lost.
No eye but Rudolph’s had witnessed the murder: the child had slept on undisturbed: but circumstances betrayed it to the knowledge of the landlord; and, in the morning, he was preparing to make it public. By great offers, however, Rudolph succeeded in purchasing the man’s silence: he engaged in substance to make over to the landlord a large sum of money, and to marry his daughter, with whom he had long pursued a clandestine intrigue. Agreeably to this arrangement, it was publicly notified that Madame Von Schrollshausen had destroyed herself under a sudden attack of hypochondriasis, to which she had been long subject. Some there were undoubtedly who chose to be sceptics on this matter: but nobody had an interest sufficiently deep in the murdered person to prompt him to a legal inquiry.
A fact, which at this time gave Rudolph far more disturbance of mind than the murder of his once beloved wife, was—the full confirmation, upon repeated experience, that his dice had forfeited their power. For he had now been a loser for two days running to so great an extent, that he was obliged to abscond on a misty night. His child, towards whom his affection increased daily, he was under the necessity of leaving with his host as a pledge for his return and fulfilment of his promises. He would not have absconded, if it had been in his power to summon his dark counsellor forthwith: but on account of the great festival of Pentecost, which fell on the very next day, this summons was necessarily delayed for a short time. By staying he would have reduced himself to the necessity of inventing various pretexts for delay, in order to keep up his character with his creditors: whereas, when he returned with a sum of money sufficient to meet his debts, all suspicions would be silenced at once.
In the metropolis of an adjacent territory, to which he resorted so often, that he kept lodgings there constantly, he passed Whitsunday with impatience—and resolved on the succeeding night to summon and converse with his counsellor. Impatient, however, as he was of any delay, he did not on that account feel the less anxiety as the hour of midnight approached. Though he was quite alone in his apartments, and had left his servant behind at the baths,—yet long before midnight he fancied that he heard footsteps and whisperings round about him. The purpose he was meditating, that he had regarded till now as a matter of indifference, now displayed itself in its whole monstrous shape. Moreover, he remembered that his wicked
