"What kind of creature is this—worm or snake?"
"It is a bee, miss," answered Twadrowski.
He was right; and he married the young lady. But they made a strange couple. Madame Twardowski sold all kinds of earthern ware in a mud hut on the market-place at Cracow. Her husband would sometimes pass that way attired like a wealthy nobleman, and he would then order his numerous servants to break his wife's wares into pieces. When the woman, in her fury, cursed him, his servants, and all about her, Twardowski, seated in his fine carriage, enjoyed his frolic the more, and would burst into loud laughter.
After some time, when Twardowski was sated with pleasure, he went one day into the depths of a forest without his instruments of magic. As he there sat, buried in thought, the demon suddenly appeared to him, and demanded that he should at once set out for Rome. The magician, enraged at the demand, drove the evil spirit from before him by a single word of a powerful incantation. But the fiend, gnashing his teeth with fury, pulled a large pine-tree up by the roots and struck Twardowski with such violence on the legs that he broke one of them. Twardowski was lamed for life; and from that hour was nicknamed, and commonly known as, "Gameleg."
At last the demon grew tired of waiting for the soul of
