to represent itself as immensely rich, he had borrowed from others what--
he was justified in believing it--had been withheld through parsimony.
Besides, his debts were small in comparison with the vast sums Herr
Casper had lavished in maintaining the impoverished estates of the
Rotterbach kindred. Like every knight whose own home was not pleasant,
he sometimes gambled; and when, yesterday, ill luck pursued him and he
lost the estate of Tannenreuth, he sincerely regretted the disaster, but
it could not be helped.

Terror and rage had sealed the old countess's lips, but now they parted
in the hoarse cry: "You deserve the wheel and the gallows, not the
honourable block!" and her daughter, Rosalinde Eysvogel, repeated in a
tone of sorrowful lamentation, "Yes, the wheel and the gallows."

A scornful laugh from Siebenburg greeted the threat, but when Herr
Casper, white as death and barely able to control his voice, asked
whether this incredible confession was merely intended to frighten the
women, and the knight assured him of the contrary, he groaned aloud:
"Then the old house must succumb to disgraceful ruin."

Years of life spent together may inspire and increase aversion instead of
love, but they undoubtedly produce a certain community of existence. The
bitter anguish of his aged household companion, the father of his wife,
to whom bonds of love still unsevered united him, touched even Seitz
Siebenburg. Besides, nothing moves the heart more quickly than the grief
of a proud, stern man. Herr Casper's confession did not make him dearer
to the knight, but it induced him to drop the irritating tone which he
had assumed, and in an altered voice he begged him not to give up his
cause as lost without resistance. For his daughter's sake old Herr
Ortlieb must lend his aid. Els, with whom he had just spoken, would