1628.] The Durrenstein. 261 _ 
he never repeated. His will was produced. The lawyers would perish 
if the style became popular. Nothing could be less wordy or more 
distinct. It contained but these expressive sentences—* My relations 
are rogues. I shall show them that they can be made fools of besides. 
‘Heinrich is my heir.’ 
« The relations were astonished. But the lawyers saw good ground 
for making a handsome suit out of the occasion, and they commenced. 
proceedings before the judges. Heinrich declared himself the most 
injured man in the world, and offered to give up every thing in his 
possession on receiving just half what the suit would have cost. The 
proposal was relished by every one but the lawyers. The money was 
subscribed, and Heinrich, setting the seals of the parties on the doors, 
received the money at the bank of Vienna. 
* The house was opened. They found all as empty as a royal chapel 
when it gets wind at court that the king is not to be there. The rela- 
tives were indefatigable; bags, boxes, wainscots, every thing were tried, 
‘turned inside out, torn down, cut up, unsewed, broken, yet nothing 
transpired. The confessor was gone ; and it was presumed, that, as the 
business of a confessor is to secure human weakness from evil, Heinrich 
had thought himself authorized to remove the root of all evil—gold. 
“ Before the spring shed her violets and primroses on the fields of the 
. Milanese, the confessor was a gallant captain of Condottieri, in the ser- 
vice of Milan, and ready for the service of any and every Italian poten- 
tate according to pay and plunder. He lived long, happy, and rich, 
died in his bed, and had a monument, half as high as the Duomo, 
declaring, ‘that as every virtue lived, so the world’s delight died, with 
the most renowned, heroic, and holy Count Enrico di Castello di bona 
Fortuna.’ ” 
My hearers politely professed themselves charmed with the poetic 
justice of the story ; and I should have probably proceeded to reap 
additional applause, and vindicate the dexterity of imperial robber 
catchers on a larger scale, but for one of the customary incidents of 
mountain excursions—the settling of a mass of heavy clouds on the pin- 
nacles above our heads. The sun sank sullenly under this purple veil. 
Murmurings were heard through the forest, with which mortals had 
nothing to do. Fires were seen glittering behind the solid shade of 
precipices, where never gipsy ventured to light them. The horses 
gave sensible signs of an inclination to find their way to the first stable ; 
and the yawning postilions swore in twenty forms of imprecation against 
the crime of suffering themselves and their beasts to stay out sight-seeing, 
when all that could be got in exchange for supper and shelter was as 
thorough a wetting as ever drenched ambassadorial livery. We took 
their advice, seconded as it was by the gusty howlings of the forest, and 
the deeper volumes of vapour that now began to stoop from the pin- 
nacles to the ravine. A dash of rain, the avant-coureur of a deluge, put 
us all in motion ; and I had the honour of being appointed guide to the 
little Wirthhaus,* where I had pitched my tent for the last week, and 
which its portly and pence-loving landlord, Herr Michael Squeezegelt, 
would have felt it as an affront of the blackest dye to hear called by a 
less title than Gasthaus.t 
I invited my new visitors to make merry, ordered the best supper that 
* Alchouse. + Hotel. 
