his shoulders hung a long cloak of gray linen, which, in addressing
the multitude, he sometimes threw around him in picturesque folds,
sometimes spread out wide, enveloping his long arms in it, so that he
looked like an expanded bat.

"Ah! it is Pfannenstiel, our prophetic linen-weaver," said Mr.
Kretschmer, smiling, as he opened his window, and exchanged a look of
recognition with the man who was gazing up at him.

The linen-weaver and prophet had rapidly acquired some renown in
Berlin by his prophecies and predictions. The people believed in his
mystic words and soothsayings and mistaken fanaticism. He related to
them his visions and apparitions; he told about the angels and the
Lord Jesus, who often visited him; about the Virgin Mary, who appeared
in his room every night, and inspired him with what he was to say to
the people, and gave him pictures whose mystic signification he was to
interpret to them. The prophet possessed more than a hundred of these
pictures, given him by celestial apparitions. He had them carefully
pasted together, and rolled up always with him. These pictorial
sheets, roughly painted on coarse paper, served the linen-weaver in
lieu of cards or coffee-grounds, for the purpose of prophesying to the
people and announcing the future to them; and the good folks of Berlin
believed in these prophecies with firm faith, and listened with devout
confidence to the words of their prophet.

Pfannenstiel was in the act of unrolling his pictures, and the
multitude, which, just before, had been shouting and screaming, became
suddenly silent, and gazed up at the weaver with intense expectation.
A breathless silence ensued, and, far down the street, sounded the
prophet's loud and sonorous voice. He pointed to the last of his