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Updated: June 27, 2025
"Beelzebub be praised!" cried the kopanitschar's wife, and she frisked about for joy. "Cook us some supper, sisterkin," said Pirka to Annie. "What sort of a guest have you brought me?" asked the latter. "You know well enough without being told." Then Annie recognized Michal, and laughed with all her might. Witches always rejoice when they see an innocent soul rushing to perdition.
At this Michal could not restrain her tears. "Come, come, my pretty darling, don't weep! Shall I tell you a pretty tale? What shall it be about?" Michal ceased to sob. She begged Pirka to tell her the story of the lady whose dress she had worn that day. "Alas, alas, my darling! that is a very sad story; you'll not be able to sleep if you hear that." But she told her about it all the same.
Michal could have listened to him all night. Early in the morning Pirka appeared, and brought her the wine posset spiced with cloves, cinnamon, and muscat-nut. While she was sipping it, Michal angrily asked: "Who is that tiresome man who keeps on blowing his trumpet all night in the courtyard below?" She was already learning to be sly. It is ever so with women.
At the same time Valentine treated his beloved as his bride indeed, but not as his affianced wife. At the first cockcrow the witches ceased to dance. Simplex they sent into the loft to sleep of his fatigue. The kopanitschar's wife set about preparing breakfast; but Pirka went into the room of the lovers to ask them what they had been dreaming about.
In which it is shown not only that Satan is the author of all evil, but also that the grisly witches, his handmaidens, are always ready with their malicious practices to plunge poor mortals into utter destruction. Barbara Pirka had run straight home to the lonely house that stood outside the walls of Zeb.
But she followed the evil counsel of Barbara Pirka so well that she flattered and fondled her husband to the top of his bent, although he no longer wore the splendid scarlet doublet of yesterday, but only a day-laborer's common linen blouse. In his joy he unfastened his leather girdle and shook out the two hundred gold pieces into her lap. "That is your nuptial gift," said he.
She put together the three dresses the delicate rose-colored dress, the corn-flower blue, and the purple one; then she hung them all up before her one after the other, examined them all, and considered which would suit her best. Then she let Pirka disguise her as a peasant girl, and put on her a short frock and high red shoes. At that moment a flourish of trumpets was heard before the gates.
Solitary confinement is the worst of all torments, it is worse than hunger. She would have felt much more comfortable if Pirka had been with her. Even the witch's words, with all their devilish insinuations, were better than the eternal, ghostly gibbering of the crackling logs, this piping and squeaking through doors and window crevices, and this howling in the chimney when the wind blew.
Michal readily consented to this change of raiment, and going into the adjoining room, she took off her dress, her earrings, and her necklace. Her three dresses and all her jewels she gave to Pirka, who had calculated on obtaining these perquisites all along. "Do you think Valentine will like me in this dress?" asked the pretty young lady, as she put on her sober weeds again.
With that the pair of them led her into the kitchen, and made a great fire, on which they put sundry pots. But Pirka filled a smaller pan with water, and after performing all sorts of mystic hocus-pocus over it, put it also on the fire, first of all throwing into it a scrap of paper, on which the word Valentine was written. "What does that pot do on the fire?" asked Annie.
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