woman said: "Fortune telling is only a pretense;" all agreed 

 that men could not learn the art. 



Doctor Maier ceased speaking and was directed to file 

 the documents; not long after the Emperor issued a decree 

 banishing all gipsies from his dominions, which, needless to 

 say, was not successfully accomplished. 



The Secretary then presented a plea for commutation of 

 sentence made by an army officer accused of treason, rather 

 singularly the Emperor instantly acceeded and the miserable 

 man was spared his life in consideration of perpetual impris- 

 onment in a gloomy cell. 



Rudolph had hitherto showed great patience, but now he 

 turned uneasily in his chair and gazed through the window 

 at the beautiful view of Prague, the closely built houses with 

 the numerous Church spires breaking the roof-line, the noble 

 bridge across the placid Moldau, the fertile fields and the forest 

 preserves beyond; he then arose and walked to the desk be- 

 fore which his Secretary sat, and noticing a rather bulky 

 document from which a seal was hanging, remarked, he 

 would examine that next; during the reading he paced the 

 floor, looking down upon the city at every turn near the 

 window. The paper thus selected by lot as it were, proved 

 to be a report from the magnate Heinrich von Waldstein, 

 who had been appointed by Rudolph magistrate in the dis- 

 trict of Jungbunzlau with special authority to discover and 

 prosecute witches ; his report, divested of the magniloquent 

 inscription and stilted language, ran as follows: 



"That terrible curse of Satan, witchcraft, which has 

 proved so great an evil in the past, still afflicts many 

 districts of Bohemia in spite of the strenuous efforts of the 

 servant of your Majesty; although the rack and the fiery 

 stake have been always at hand to suppress those holding 

 converse with the Devil, many kinds of infernal sorcery 



188 



