Note 352 — Chapter VIII · THE UNFREE. THE SERF.

The illegitimate offspring of his own wife, a husband was not likely to spare. An old German tale records this fact. Her lord returning from a long absence and finding a child which could not be his own in the house, was told by the faithless mother, that when walking in the fields a flake of snow had fallen into her bosom and impregnated her. Afterwards the husband took the child to Italy and sold him there, excusing himself to the mother by the assertion that the heat of the sun had melted the snow-child:—

“De nive conceptum quem mater adultera finxit;

Hunc dominus vendens liquefactum sole retulit.”