Not he! When the dish-
cover was lifted, there he saw himself lying, boiled!
"'I did not feel uncomfortable then," Kraut told us. "It seemed
natural."
'His face, as it lay there, he says, was quite calm, only a little
wrinkled, and piggish-looking-like. There was the mole on his chin, and
the pucker under his left eyelid. Well! the Baron carved. All the
guests were greedy for a piece of him. Some cried out for breast; some
for toes. It was shuddering cold to sit and hear that! The Baroness
said, "Cheek!"'
'Ah!' shrieked Margarita, 'that can I not bear! I will not hear it,
aunt; I will not!'
'Cheek!' Aunt Lisbeth reiterated, nodding to the floor.
Margarita put her fingers to her ears.
'Still, Kraut says, even then he felt nothing odd. Of course he was
horrified to be sitting with spectres as you and I should be; but the
first tremble of it was over. He had plunged into the bath of horrors,
and there he was. I 've heard that you must pronounce the names of the
Virgin and Trinity, sprinkling water round you all the while for three
minutes; and if you do this without interruption, everything shall
disappear. So they say. "Oh! dear heaven of mercy!" says Kraut, "what
I felt when the Baron laid his long hunting-knife across my left cheek!"'
Here Aunt Lisbeth lifted her eyes to dote upon Margarita's fright.
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