The woman unfolded her grievance, and used several bad expressions with regard to her mistress, which caused her companion to grin with sympathetic pleasure. He then inquired what revenge she desired to take; to which Martha replied that she should like to have the power given her of inflicting severe personal chastisement upon the Baroness. But the demon scouted the idea. The pride of birth and rank work too much good to the objects which are dear to evil spirits to make them partial to any plan for the degradation of either one or the other, and such a degradation would have been inflicted had the well-born Baroness been subjected to personal chastisement at the hands of her menial. Besides this, the power of the demon was but limited, and this would have been possibly beyond it. Martha suggested several other things, but at length she broke out in joyful tones, as if an unusually bright idea had suddenly struck her: “I know!” she cried; “let’s do something to the child, the young Baron Hubert. Strangle him, or lame him for life, or make him humpbacked; that will wring her old heart-strings!” On hearing these words, the demon, who was a decent fellow at bottom, though withal up to any mischief of a reasonable kind, positively shuddered at the bitterness of the waiting-maid’s speech, accompanied as it was with a look of fiendish exultation which would have done credit to the worst of devils. “Stop a bit, miss, stop a bit,” said he. “Fair and softly wins the race; you go too fast, and want too much, all at once. You must know that we demons cannot do everything {061}just how and when, we please, as you seem to imagine. Not a bit of it! Fortunately for mortals who have enemies (and who has not?) our power is limited; and even suppose you had the child with you at this moment, I could not do what you require.” “Then,” exclaimed Martha angrily, “what in the name of goodness _can_ you do?” At these words the demon shuddered visibly. “Don’t use such language, young lady,” said he, “if you want _my_ help, but listen attentively to what I am about to say.” Much flattered at being called a young lady, and probably all the more so from her knowledge that to neither the substantive nor the adjective had she any right whatever, Martha bent her head forward eagerly, to hear what the water-demon had to suggest. “If you like,” said he, “I can change the child.” “Change the child!” cried the disappointed woman; “why, what would be the good of _that?_” “All the good in the world,” replied her counsellor, “if you really wish to plague the mother. In the first place, the child I shall put in the place of the young Baron will not be nearly so pretty as the real child, and this will gall the mother’s heart not a little, unless baronesses are unlike other women. Then this false child will have a very much worse disposition. He will be cunning, ill-natured, greedy, mischievous, and a plague to the whole household.”