"
The adventurer rushed to the weighing-machine, not indeed to the scale
on which the gold was, but to where the girl stood and lifted her down
on his arm as if she were a child. The other scale, losing its balance,
rushed earthwards and the sacks filled with gold ducats toppled off it
left and right.
At this the company was delighted. Fatia Negra's manly tenderness was
appreciated by everyone and old Onucz, radiant with joy, turned towards
his cronies: "You see it is not my money but my daughter that he is
after!"
And yet if Fatia Negra had only been able to foresee what was about to
happen the next instant, if only he had been able to guess what would
happen during the first few moments of the first approaching quarter of
an hour, could he but have heard one step, one bump which might have
told him what was going on just then above his head, instead of
extending his hands towards the girl, he would have done much more
wisely if he had grasped in each hand one of the sacks lying on the
other scale and made off with it somewhere through that dark corridor
which nobody knew of but he himself, under the special protection of the
devil. Just now, however, the devil was evidently not looking after him
as carefully as usual, for he returned to the altar with the girl in his
arms and deposited his load on the altar steps. The girl knelt down.
"Strew over her corn moistened with honey!" whispered old Onucz to the
bridesmaids;--he considered this old custom as of the highest
importance.
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