The Devil and Faustus were riding in close conversation along the banks of the Fulda, when they saw beneath an oak-tree a countrywoman sitting with her children, appearing to be the lifeless image of agony and dumb despair. Faustus, whom sorrow attracted as much as joy, went hurriedly up to her, and inquired the cause of her grief. The woman gazed at him for some time, and it was not until his sympathising look had in some degree melted her frozen heart that she was able, amidst tears and sobbings, to explain herself in the following words: "In the whole world there are no beings so wretched as myself and these poor children. My husband was indebted to the Prince-Bishop for three years' rent. The first year he could not pay it, on account of the failure of his crops; during the second the Bishop's wild-boars grubbed up all his seed from the ground; and during the third his whole hunting-train galloped over our fields and destroyed our harvest. As my husband had often been threatened by the steward with a distress, he intended to have gone this morning to Frankfort, to sell a fat calf and his last pair of oxen, and with the amount to have paid his rent. But just as he was setting out the Bishop's clerk-of-the-kitchen came, and demanded the calf for his lordship's table. My husband pleaded his poverty, and told him how unjust it would be to take away his calf, which would fetch a high price at Frankfort. The clerk-of-the-kitchen answered, that no peasant had a right to carry any thing out of his master's domain. The steward and his bailiffs then came, and instead of taking my husband's part, he drove off the oxen; the clerk-of-the-kitchen took the calf; the bailiffs turned me and my children out of house and home; and while they were pillaging and carrying off our goods, my husband went into the barn and out his throat in despair. The poor wretch lies under that sheet, and we sit here to watch the body, so that it may not be devoured by the wild-beasts, for the priest has refused to bury it." She tore away the white sheet which had concealed the body, and fell to the ground. Faustus started at the horrible sight, while tears gushed from his eyes, and he cried, "Man, man, is this thy lot?" Then looking up to heaven, "Oh! didst thou create this unfortunate man merely that a servant of thy religion might drive him to despair and suicide?" He cast the cloth over the body, flung the woman some gold, and said, "I will go to the Bishop and tell him your melancholy story. I am certain that he will bury your husband, give you back your goods, and punish the villains."