* The erudite reader, well versed in good-for-nothing lore, will
perceive that the above Tale must have been suggested to the old
Swiss by a little French anecdote, a circumstance said to have
taken place in Paris.
+ I.e., CAT'S ELBOW--the name of a family of those parts, and
very powerful in former times. The appellation, we are told, was
given in compliment to a peerless dame of the family, celebrated
for a fine arm.
The baron had but one child, a daughter, but Nature, when she
grants but one child, always compensates by making it a prodigy;
and so it was with the daughter of the baron. All the nurses,
gossips, and country cousins assured her father that she had not
her equal for beauty in all Germany; and who should know better
than they? She had, moreover, been brought up with great care
under the superintendence of two maiden aunts, who had spent some
years of their early life at one of the little German courts, and
were skilled in all branches of knowledge necessary to the
education of a fine lady. Under their instructions she became a
miracle of accomplishments. By the time she was eighteen she
could embroider to admiration, and had worked whole histories of
the saints in tapestry with such strength of expression in their
countenances that they looked like so many souls in purgatory.
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