"Stay," said the fourth; "it is possible he has got the dwarf princess concealed about his person. So much the better, we shall get them both together, and divide the reward between us. Let us search him." "Ha! is that so?" said the first. A rigid search was made on the person of Hans, but they found not the princess. "Hold there, ruffians!" cried Hans. "Ye shall do the princess no harm. Do you hear; for, besides being your rightful queen, she is my wife." A general laugh ensued. Hans was no less puzzled than the men themselves at her disappearance. "Where can she be?" quoth he. "All last night she was watching beside me, like a true wife, and now----" "Come, the fellow is dreaming still, or else trying to befool us," cried one of the men, at length. "Let us hasten with him to the princess." Hans was then conducted into the palace, and led into an amphitheatre, where the late king was wont to listen to stage plays, singing, recitations, and such like. The theatre was crowded, and in a conspicuous place he noticed the Princess Clothilde and her sister Carlotta. "Welcome, Sir Peasant Knight. Welcome, Sir Woodchopper," said the princesses, mockingly. "We have heard of your great deeds of yesterday, Sir Knight," said the Princess Clothilde. "Surely such bravery deserves a reward." Then, turning to one of the men who accompanied Hans, she added: "Give the brave knight the reward he merits." The men had previously been instructed how Hans was to be treated, so one of them proceeded to strip him to the waist, whilst another took from behind a column a cat-o'-nine-tails, with which he belaboured the naked shoulders of our knight with such force that he drew blood at every stroke, while the spectators applauded and the princesses laughed. Hans bore his flogging without wincing, though his back was streaming with blood. The Princess Bertha was with her husband all the while, though invisible. She was touched at the cruel spectacle, and her blood rose in indignation against her sisters, yet she would not yet come forward to assist her husband. He had been in the wrong, and he must take the consequences of his folly. She pitied him from her heart; she admired, too, the fortitude with which he endured such pain and indignity; but she had his good in view. She knew that, as a child is taught to know better another time by one good flogging, so her husband, who was nothing but a child in mind, must be cured by the same remedy. "The loss of a little blood, as our leeches say, is good for the health occasionally," remarked Clothilde. "Besides, as your knighthood is well aware, a knight, whose trade it is to shed blood, must not wince if now and then a little of his own is shed." "How thinkest thou, Sir Knight," asked Carlotta, "that a back _sanglant_ would look in thine escutcheon?" These, and such like gibes were thrown at Hans, who treated them all with silent contempt.