THE MAGIC RING. OLIVER & BOYD, PRINTERS. THE MAGIC RING; A ROMANCE, FROM THE GERMAN OF FREDERICK, BARON DE LA MOTTE FOUQUÉ IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. III. EDINBURGH; PUBLISHED BY OLIVER & BOYD, TWEEDDALE-COURT; AND GEO. B. WHITTAKER, LONDON. 1825. THE MAGIC RING. VOL. III. CHAPTER I. How the Moor Alhafiz came for the Lady Bertha. It was late in the evening, at the castle of the Lady Gabrielle in Gascony, when Bertha von Lichtenried sat, studiously, with a large book open on a reading-desk before her. The book contained the history of pious saints and canonized martyrs; and she could devote her attention thereto the more uninterruptedly, as, with the exception of a few servants, she was now left quite alone in the castle, having through many days looked in vain for the return of Sir Folko and the two damsels. It seemed as if departing summer had taken her last farewell; and this farewell was uttered in fearful claps of thunder, while the ocean mirrored on its vasty depths the frequent bursts of lightning. A heavy shower also beat upon the garden-terrace, and meanwhile the warder failed not to ring with great perseverance the consecrated bell, whose notes were to protect the castle from all injury. He was answered, too, by the church-bells of all the neighbouring towns and villages, so that it seemed as if the reverberations from the clouds had been met and changed on earth into pious and pleasant harmony. Threefold, therefore, was the piety of the Lady Bertha strengthened and increased; first, by the thunder’s mighty voice above; then by the musical notes of the church-bells; lastly, by the pious legends which she then read in her favourite volumes. So it happened at this time that there came into her chamber an old Moorish woman, a servant at the castle, with an uncouth and swarth visage, for she was a native of Africa, though now converted to the Christian faith, and accustomed to the manners of life in Europe. By her dress and conduct one would have thought that she was an ordinary Suabian peasant, had it not been, that her dark complexion and strange features betrayed her eastern origin.