Often did poor Peter Munk the coal burner think of these three men, when sitting alone in the pine forest. All three indeed had one great fault, which made them hated by every body: this was their insatiable avarice, their heartlessness towards their debtors and towards the poor, for the Schwarzwälder are naturally a kind-hearted people. However, we all know how it is in these matters; though they were hated for their avarice, yet they commanded respect on account of their money, for who but they could throw away thalers, as if they could shake them from the pines? “This will do no longer,” said Peter one day to himself, when he felt very melancholy, it being the morrow after a holiday when every body had been at the inn; “if I don’t soon thrive I shall make away with myself; Oh that I were as much looked up to and as rich as the stout Hesekiel, or as bold and powerful as the tall Schlurker, or as renowned as the king of the ball-room, and could like him throw thalers instead of kreutzers to the musicians! I wonder where the fellow gets his money!” Reflecting upon all the different means by which money may be got, he could please himself with none, till at length he thought of the tales of those people who, in times of old, had become rich through the Dutchman Michel, or the glass-mannikin. During his father’s lifetime other poor people often made their calls, and then their conversation was generally about rich persons, and the means by which they had come by their riches; in these discourses the glass-mannikin frequently played a conspicuous part. Now, if Peter strained his memory a little he could almost recall the short verse which one must repeat near the Tannenbühl in the heart of the forest, to make the sprite appear. It began as follows: “Keeper of wealth in the forest of pine, Hundreds of years are surely thine: Thine is the tall pine’s dwelling place--” But he might tax his memory as much as he pleased, he could remember no more of it. He often thought of asking some aged person what the whole verse was. However, a certain fear of betraying his thoughts kept him back, and moreover he concluded that the legend of the glass-mannikin could not be very generally known, and that but few were acquainted with the incantation, since there were not many rich persons in the Wald;--if it were generally known, why had not his father, and other poor people, tried their luck? At length, however, he one day got his mother to talk about the mannikin, and she told him what he knew already, as she herself remembered only the first line of the verse, but she added, that the sprite would show himself only to those who had been born on a Sunday, between eleven and two o’clock. He was, she said, quite fit for evoking him, as he was born at twelve o’clock at noon; if he but knew the verse.