him by Rubezahl with the same indescribable anxiety and baffled expectation.[1]
No. V. HOW RUBEZAHL CHANGED HIMSELF INTO AN ASS.
A glazier was once travelling across the mountain with a heavy load of glass upon his back; long and sore had the poor man toiled beneath his burden, and being now ready to sink beneath it, he was looking around him for a place where he might rest himself. Rubezahl—ever on the lookout for adventures—soon espied the way-worn traveller, and instantly transformed himself into a log of wood, which the glazier no sooner perceived lying on the ground before him than he hastened to rest himself upon it. But scarcely had he got himself comfortably seated, and stretched out his weary limbs, than away rolled the log from beneath him, and the poor glazier found himself upset, and all his frame of glass shivered into a thousand pieces.
With some difficulty he got upon his legs again, but the false log was no longer to be seen. The poor man was sore grieved on account of his loss, and gazed upon the broken fragments of glass which lay strewed around till tears filled his eyes. Then appeared Rubezahl, in the form of a traveller, who asked the glazier what ailed him; whereupon the latter told all that had befallen him,—how long and sore he had toiled—and how the false log had slipped from beneath
- ↑ The same horrid story is current in the mountains of Salzburg.
