260 The Durrenstein. (Serr. 
from being employed to bring 2 succession of similar potentates to their 
senses by similar means; with native singleness of soul, he had always 
employed the same bait, which the German chieftainry always swallowed 
with the same appetite. But he was old, and thought of retiring from 
his profession, though a gold mine to him since he had discovered the 
art of helping himself, in the first instance, to the spoils. Both his 
wealth and his age gave him influence with the minister, who set himself 
down for the merchant’s heir, and that, too, at no remote date. The 
brothers laid their sorrows before him, and he recollecting that they 
had made his fortune, laid them before the minister. The petition 
was instantly attended to, the irons struck off, the spade resigned, the 
rations of rye-bread and ditch water exchanged for less heathenish pro- 
visions ; and, finally after six months’ attendance on sermons preached 
by the most “searching divines” of Vienna, a torture to which, they 
protested, the irons were infinitely preferable, they were let loose, with a 
vast deal of good advice, and permission to beg their bread, only saving 
this interdict, that they should not be found begging it in Vienna, on 
pain of five hundred lashes a piece for the first offence, and the wheel 
for the second. 
« The brothers now set forth on the grand experiment of living on the 
world’s compassion. But it failed them in a week. They had not the art of 
touching the feelings, and they were on the point of starving in company, 
just as the spires of Vienna rose once more to their view. The same 
thought started to both their tongues—‘ Shall that rascal Rudiger fatten 
‘on our robbery?’ They determined to be masters of his wealth. Hadmar, 
a daring fellow, who knew no more of the world than that it was more 
easily frightened than reasoned into doing its duty, went to the sword- 
cutler’s, bought a trusty weapon, and forced an entrance into the mer- 
chant’s immense mansion at midnight.. He found Rudiger wasted to a 
skeleton by age and avarice, and calculating how many farthings he 
‘would lose by the difference of paper and specie. Hadmar demanded 
his money. The old miser screamed out. A whole army of relations, 
‘who slept in the house to have the first grasp of his ducats, thinking 
that he was giving up the ghost, started up from their beds, and came 
running, half naked, to attend the dying hour of their ‘excellent and 
much-lamented relative. Hadmar was overpowered by numbers, 
‘seized, pinioned, tried upon the spot, and as the cousins, aunts, and 
uncles of the miser conceived that there were claimants enough already, 
they treated the new interloper as they would have been delighted to 
treat each other ; they threw out a cord from the balcony, and the rising 
sun saw Hadmar hanging from its finely-flourished bars. 
« Heinrich had, by some accident, gained a surer knowledge of the 
way to wealth, and, instead of going to the sword-cutler’s, he had gone 
to the gates of a convent. He there wept, prayed the loudest in the 
chapel, ate the least in the refectory, and his saintship was promulged 
‘through all the city, before the quarter was out. The saint next pre- 
sented himself to Rudiger as the only saint who could wash his con- 
science clear of ail peccability. It was exactly such a man that the 
-‘merchant’s crazy conscience wanted. The confessor entered. The 
relations soon received a hint to withdraw. They were slow in under- 
standing it, and, finally, one evening, the whole blood of the Rudiger 
dineage was turned into the street. But the effort was formidable at the 
merchant's age } and as the last echo of their cries, he uttered one which 
