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Updated: June 19, 2025
Do you go to confession merely for dreaming that you are another man's wife. Fear nothing! If only you will put yourself in my hands, you will tread on no one's corns. But if you try to get away from me, it will only be so much labor lost. I have only to send a letter, a word, to Henry Catsrider, and you and your Valentine are lost.
She did not endure her fate calmly. She bit, kicked, scratched, cursed the saints and all mankind, and called upon the devil to help her. They had to bind her by force to the pillar. And Henry Catsrider actually took pleasure in the hideous contest.
Valentine actually believed that there was still some human feeling left in Henry Catsrider! When all this had been done he arose from his seat of honor. The whole town council bowed before him. The conrector, Ignatius Zwirina the younger, expressed the satisfaction felt by all the burgesses at having a sheriff whose wise and firm administration would serve as an example to all his successors.
Henry Catsrider, therefore, might be quite sure that he had become an orphan and a widower on the same day. At Bártfa, meanwhile, Pirka got Michal a place in a respectable shopkeeper's family, where they willingly took her in because she was so very plain. It was a sort of guarantee that no one would attempt to court her, and thereby deprive them of a useful servant.
It could make not the slightest difference. But no sooner had the threatened peril been so marvelously averted than the laughter of the pretty lady infected the trumpeter to such a degree that he let his instrument fall to the ground; then the kopanitschar also rose from the ground and burst into a hoarse guffaw, and at last Henry Catsrider himself descended from his perch and also burst out laughing.
He had obtained her hand by subtlety. And all this would now come out. He did not know what to say. Words failed him. But still more frightened was Michal. Full of terror she pressed her husband's hand. Then Valentine turned to Henry Catsrider and said: "I forbid you to answer that question. It has no bearing on the case. I acknowledge and confess that my consort was this man's wife.
"What's that?" cried Valentine, "whose voice is that? Who but one that has attended the lectures of the learned Professor David Fröhlich could have heard of this Abyssinian tale? Who is it?" He looked up and recognized the man in scarlet on the scaffold. "That is Henry Catsrider, the husband of your Michal!" cried Simplex, looking him full in the face.
It was an offense which death alone could not atone for. It must be pursued even beyond the grave. Yet the judges had at least so much humanity they would not let Henry Catsrider execute his own wife. It was enough that the seducer should be made over to him.
The heavy doors had no sooner closed behind the two women than Christian Catsrider said to his son: "Follow me!" With that he took out of his side pocket a key with a double ward, and unlocked therewith a secret door, discovering a spiral staircase which led up to a tower. Henry knew from experience that the old man kept his treasures in this tower.
Not even in the civic accounts was the name of Catsrider to be found. So they laughed the old man out of countenance with his Catsriders. They told him that people were making an April fool of him. But for all that he would not budge, but actually made a house to house visitation through the town of Zeb, to find out what had become of his son-in-law and his daughter.
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