Chapter XVIII.

During the entire battle, until nightfall, the people of Grandfontaine saw the fool, Yegof, standing on the summit of Little Donon, his crown upon his head, his sceptre waving in his hand. There he stood, like a Merovingian king, issuing his orders to his imaginary armies. What feelings shook him as he saw the Germans beaten back, routed, no man may say. At the last echo of the cannon he disappeared. Whither had he gone? This is what the people of Tiefenbach say:

At the time of which I speak, two strange beings--sisters--lived on the Bocksberg. One was called Little Kateline; the other Tall Berbel. These two ragged creatures made their home in the cavern of Luitprand, so named, as old chronicles aver, from the fact that the King of the Germani, before descending into Alsace, buried beneath its immense vault of red stone the barbarian chiefs who had fallen at Blutfeld. The hot spring, which always bubbles and streams from the middle of the cave, secured the sisters from the fierce cold of mountain winters, and Daniel Horn, of Tiefenbach, the wood-cutter, had the charity to close the main entrance from without with great heaps of broom and brushwood. At the side of the hot spring was another spring, cold as ice and clear as crystal.

Kateline always drank at this spring, and was not more than four feet in height; but what she lacked in length she made up in rotund breadth; and her wondering look, round eyes, and enormous throat, gave her the appearance of a meditative matronly hen. Every Sunday she bore an osier basket to the village of Tiefenbach, and the good people there filled it with cooked potatoes, loaves of bread, and sometimes, on holidays, with cakes and other remnants of their festivities. Then the poor creature would make her way back to the cave, breathless, laughing, chattering, rejoicing.

But Tall Berbel was ever careful not to drink at the cold spring. She was bony, fleshless as a bat, and had lost an eye; her nose was flat, her ears large, and her single orb sparkled like a coal; she lived upon the fruits of her sister's sallies. She never left Bocksberg. But in July, when the heat was greatest, standing upon the height, she shook a withered thistle over the grain of those who had not regularly filled Kateline's basket; and fearful tempests, or hail, or swarms of rats or field-mice, ruined the budding harvest. The spells of Berbel were feared like pestilence; she was everywhere known as the _Wetterhexe_, or storm-witch, while little Kateline was esteemed the good fairy of Tiefenbach. In this way Berbel lived in idleness, and Kateline begged food for both.

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Unfortunately for the two sisters, Yegof had for some years previously established his winter residence in the cavern of Luitprand. Thence he departed in the spring, to visit his numberless castles and to count his feudatories, as far as Geierstein in the Hundsruck. Every year, toward the end of November, after the first snows, he arrived with his raven--an event which the storm-witch always bitterly bemoaned.

"Again thy plaints," he was wont to say, as he tranquilly installed himself in the most comfortable spot the cave afforded; "do you not both live upon my domains? I am very good to suffer two _valkyrs_ [Footnote 271] useless in the Valhalla of my fathers, to remain here."

[Footnote 271: Maidens of Odin, whom he sends to every battlefield to decide who shall fall and who shall be victorious. They also wait upon the heroes in Valhalla.]

Then would Berbel, aroused to fury, overwhelm him with reproach and insult, and Kateline look offended; but he, careless of the storm he raised, would only light his old boxwood pipe, and relate his far-off wanderings among the souls of the German warriors, who, for sixteen centuries, lay buried in the cavern, calling them by name, and speaking to them as to men yet living. You may imagine with what delight Berbel and Kateline looked forward to the coming of the fool with his dismal tales.

But this year, Yegof had not come, and the sisters believed him dead, and duly rejoiced over the prospect of seeing him no more. Nevertheless, the Wetterhexe had observed the agitation in the valleys, the crowds of men, musket on shoulder, leaving Falkenstein and Donon. Surely, something strange had happened; and the sorceress, calling to mind that the preceding year Yegof had related to the spirits of his warriors how his countless armies would soon invade the land, felt a vague uneasiness. She would fain have learned the cause of the movement around her; but Kateline having made her tour the Sunday before, would not again budge from her home for an empire, and no one ever climbed to the cavern.

In this frame of mind Berbel came and went, wandered restlessly about the cave, growing hourly more uneasy and irritable. But during Saturday she had enough to think on. From nine o'clock in the morning, heavy and deep peals rang like thunder over the mountain side, and awoke the thousand echoes of the valleys; far away toward Donon rapid flashes crossed what sky appeared between the peaks; and as night approached, yet louder sounds rolled through every gorge, and the hollow voices of Hengst, of Gantzlée, Giromani and Grossmann replied.

"What can all this be?" asked Berbel of herself, "can the day of doom have come?"

Then returning to the cavern and finding Kateline huddled in a corner munching a potato, she shook her rudely and hissed:

"Idiot! hearest thou nothing? Fearest thou nothing? Carest thou for nothing but eating and drinking?"

She dashed the potato furiously to the ground, and sat herself trembling by the hot spring, which sent its grey vapors to the roof. Half an hour later, the darkness growing deeper, and the cold intense, she lighted a fire of brushwood, which threw its pale flashes over the vault of red stone, and pierced to the end of the cavern, where Kateline slept with her feet buried in a heap of straw, and her chin resting on her knees. {623} Without, all noise had ceased. The storm-witch pulled aside the briars at the entrance, and gazed down the mountain side; then she returned to her post by the fire, her thin lips set tightly together, and her eyelids closed; she drew an old woolen coverlet over her knees, and seemed to sleep. No sound broke the stillness but the dripping of the condensed steam falling from the vault back to its source with a melancholy plash.

So lasted the silence for hours. Midnight was nearing, when suddenly the sound of footsteps, mingled with discordant noises, started Berbel from her slumber. She listened, and heard the cry of a human voice. She arose trembling, and, armed with a huge thorn branch, glided to the opening; there, pushing aside the briars, she saw in the moonlight the fool Yegof advancing alone, but writhing as if in agony, and beating the air with his sceptre, as if thousands of invisible beings surrounded him.

"To the rescue, Roug, Bléd, Adelrick!" he shouted in tones that pierced the cold air like the clangor of an iron bell, his matted beard and hair waving the while, and his dog-skin cloak folded like a buckler around his left arm; "to the rescue! Follow me to the death! See you not who are coming, cleaving the skies like eagles? On, men of the red beards! Crush this race of dogs! Ah! Minan, Rochart, are ye here?"

And then he called with savage shouts, upon all the dead of Donon, defying them as if they were really there; then he recoiled step by step, still striking the air, hurling curses, urging unseen armies to the fight, and struggling as if surrounded by foes. A cold sweat poured from Berbel's brow, she felt her hair rise upon her head, and she would have fled; but at the moment a strange murmuring arose within the cave, and, to her horror, she saw the hot spring boiling fiercely, and masses of vapor rising from it and advancing to the entrance of the cave.

Like phantoms the thick clouds came slowly on, and suddenly Yegof appeared, crying in a husky voice,

"At last ye have heard me! ye are come!"

With a bound he darted to the opening. The icy air filled the vault, and the vapors pouring forth, twisted and wreathed beneath the vast vault of heaven, as if the dead of to-day and those of long gone centuries had begun a never-ending conflict.

The pale moonbeams shed a weird light over Yegof's face and form, as he stood with flashing eyes and sceptre outstretched, and beard falling over his breast, saluting each phantom and calling it by name.

"All hail, Bléd! Hail to thee, Roug! and to ye all, brave warriors! The hour which for centuries you have awaited is at hand; the eagles are whetting their beaks; the earth thirsts for blood! Remember Blutfeld!"

Berbel's senses had almost left her; fear alone kept her standing; but soon the last clouds escaped from the cavern and melted in the limitless blue.

Yegof entered the vault and sat upon the ground near the hot spring, his head resting upon his hands, and his elbows on his knees, gazing with haggard eyes on the bubbling waters.

Kateline awoke sobbing, and the storm-witch, more dead than alive, observed the fool from the darkest nook of the cave.

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"They have all arisen from their graves," cried he suddenly; "all! all! not one remains behind. They will give life to the hearts of my young warriors, and teach them to despise death!"

He raised his face. A crushing sorrow seemed settled there.

"O woman!" he said, fixing his eyes upon the Wetterhexe with a wolfish glare, "O thou descendant of the Valkyrs, but who at the festal board hast never filled the deep cups of the warriors with mead, nor placed before them the smoking flesh of the boar Serimar, what canst thou do? Canst spin winding-sheets? To thy task then! Spin night and day, for thousands of bold warriors are stretched upon the snow. They fought valiantly. They did their work well, but the hour had not yet come. Now the ravens feed upon their flesh!"

Then in ungovernable fury, seizing his crown with both hands, and tearing it from his head, although with it came away handfuls of hair, he shouted:

"Accursed tribe! Will ye ever bar our way! But for ye we had long since conquered Europe; ay, we of the red beards had been masters of the world. And I humbled myself before this race of dogs! I asked his daughter of one of them, instead of bearing her off as the wolf does the lamb! Ah Huldrix! Huldrix! Listen, Valkyr," he suddenly added in a low tone, "listen!"

He raised his finger solemnly. The Wetterhexe listened; a blast arose without, and shook the old frost-laden forest. How often had the sorceress heard that sound before, during the long winter nights, without giving it a thought. Now, she was afraid.

And while she stood trembling, a hoarse cry smote her ear, and the raven Hans, sweeping beneath the rock, flew in circles round and round the cavern, flapping his wings as if in terror, and croaking mournfully.

Yegof became pale as death.

"Vod! Vod!" he cried in despairing tones, "what has thy son Luitprand done to thee? Why choose him rather than another?"

And for some seconds he seemed to have swooned; but soon, as if carried away by a savage enthusiasm, brandishing his sceptre, he darted from the cavern.

Wetterhexe, standing in the opening, followed him with an anxious eye.

He strode straight onward, with outstretched neck, like a wild beast rushing at its prey. Hans flew before, and they disappeared in the gorge of Blutfeld.