THE CAVE OF LUITPRANDT
All through the battle, till the close of night, the good people of
Grandfontaine had observed the poor crazy Yegof standing upon the crest
of the Little Donon, and, his crown on his head, with his sceptre held
aloft, like a Merovingian king, shouting commands to his phantom
armies. What passed through his mind when he saw the utter rout of the
Germans no one can say; but at the last cannon-shot he disappeared.
Where did he betake himself? On this point the people of Tiefenbach
have the following story:--
At that time there lived upon the Bocksberg two singular
creatures--sisters--one named "little Kateline," and the other "great
Berbel." These creatures, who were almost in tatters, had taken up
their abode in the "Cave of Luitprandt," so called, according to old
chronicles, because the German king, before invading Alsace, had caused
to be interred in that immense vault of red sandstone the savage chiefs
who had fallen in the battle of Blutfeld. The hot spring which always
bubbles in the middle of the cavern protected the eerie sisters from
the sharp colds of winter; and the woodcutter, Daniel Horn, of
Tiefenbach, had been good enough to fill up the largest entrance to the
rock with heaps of brushwood. By the side of the hot spring there is
another, cold as ice and clear as crystal. Kateline, who always drank
of its waters, was scarce four foot high, thick-set and bloated; and
her cowering figure, her round eyes and enormous goitre, rendered her
whole appearance peculiarly suggestive of a big turkey-hen in a
reverie. Every Sunday she carried into Tiefenbach a great basket,
which the people of the place filled with boiled potatoes, crusts of
bread, and occasionally, on high days, with cakes and other remains of
their festivals;--with which she reascended breathlessly to her rocky
home, muttering, gibbering, and behaving in the absurdest way.
Meanwhile Berbel took care to drink from the cold spring: she was
gaunt, one-eyed, scraggy as a bat, with a flat nose, large ears, a
gleaming eye, and thrived upon the booty obtained by her sister.
Seldom did she descend from the Bocksberg, except in July, at the time
of greatest heat--when she proceeded to launch her incantations--her
enchanting-wand a withered thistle--against the crops of those who had
failed to contribute to her sister's basket. These imprecations were
always believed to be followed by dire storms, hail, and destructive
vermin without stint: whence they came to be dreaded as the plague, and
the hag herself to be regarded as a weather-witch (_Wetterhexe_), while
"little Kateline" was looked upon as the good genius of Tiefenbach and
its neighborhood. In such wise Berbel folded her arms and took her
ease in her cave, while her sister went gibbering along the highways.
Unfortunately for the sisters, Yegof had for many years established his
winter-quarters in "Luitprandt's cavern;" and it was thence he set
forth every spring on a visit to his innumerable chateaux and
feudatories, as far as Geierstein in the Hundsrueck. Every year,
therefore, toward the end of November, after the first snows, he
arrived with his raven, to the accompaniment of piercing cries from
Wetterhexe.
"What have you to grumble at?" he would say, while installing himself
in the place of honor. "Are you not intruders upon my domain, and am I
not truly good to permit two such useless old hags (_Valkyries_) to
stay in the Valhalla of my fathers?"
Then Berbel, in a rage, used to overwhelm him with abuse, while
Kateline gave vent to her dissatisfaction in thick unintelligible
utterances; but he, regardless of both, lit his old box pipe and set
himself to describe his endless peregrinations to the ghosts of the
German warriors buried in the cavern sixteen centuries before, calling
upon each of them by name, and addressing them as personages still
living. From this it will be understood with what disgust the arrival
of the maniac came to be regarded by Kateline and Berbel; in fact for
both it was nothing less than a calamity.
Now in the year we are speaking of, Yegof, having failed to return to
them at the proper time, induced the sisters to believe that he was
dead and to rejoice at the idea of seeing no more of him. But for many
days Wetterhexe had remarked an extraordinary movement going on in the
neighboring gorges, and men marching off in bodies, shouldering their
muskets, from the sides of Falkenstein and Donon. Clearly something
was taking place out of the common. Recollecting that the year before
Yegof had informed the phantoms of the cave that his armies, in
countless hosts, were coming to invade the country, the sorceress was
seized with a vague apprehension and anxiety to learn the cause of so
much agitation; but no one came up to the cave, and Kateline having
made her rounds on the previous Sunday, could not have been induced to
stir out for the gift of a kingdom.
In this state of apprehension, Wetterhexe went and came upon the side
of the mountain and became hourly more restless and irritable. During
the whole of that Saturday events assumed quite another aspect. From
nine o'clock in the morning deep and heavy explosions began to growl
like a continuous storm among the thousand echoes of the mountain;
while far away in the direction of Donon, the swift lightnings swept up
across the sky among the peaks; then toward night the discharges
deepening in intensity filled the silent gorges with an indescribable
tumult. At every report the Hengst, the Gantzlee, the Giromani, and
the Grosmann cliffs seemed to echo to their lowest depths.
"What can it be?" cried Berbel. "Has the end of the world come?"
Then re-entering her lurking-place, and finding Kateline crouched in
her corner and munching a potato, Berbel shook her roughly and hissed
out:--"Fool! have you got no ears? Is there anything that you fear?
You are good for nothing but eating, drinking, and mumbling. Oh, you
idiot!"
She snatched away the potato in a rage, and then seated herself by the
side of the hot spring, which was sending up its gray fumes to the
roof. Half an hour after, the darkness having become intense and the
cold excessive, she made a fire of brushwood, which shed its pale
gleams upon the blocks of red sandstone and lit up the farthest corner
of the cave, where Kateline was now asleep, huddled in the straw, with
her chin upon her knees. Without, the noisy tumult had ceased. Then
withdrawing the brushwood curtain from the mouth of the cave, she
peered out into the darkness, and returned to crouch down, by the
spring. With her large lips compressed, her eyes closed, and the great
round wrinkles playing upon her cheeks, she drew round her knees an old
woollen covering, and appeared to fall asleep. Throughout the cavern
there was no sound, except that of the congealed vapor, which fell back
at long intervals into the spring with a strange splashing noise.
This silence lasted for about two hours; midnight was approaching, when
all of a sudden a distant sound of footsteps, mingled with discordant
cries, was heard outside the cave. Berbel listened, and at once
perceived that they were human cries. Then she rose, trembling, and,
armed with her thistle-wand, proceeded to the entrance of the cave;
whence, through the screen of brushwood, she saw, at fifty paces
distant, Yegof advancing toward her in the moonlight. He was alone,
but gesticulating and waving his sceptre, as if myriads of invisible
beings were about him.
"Hark, ye red men!" he was shrieking, with, beard sticking up on end,
his hair streaming about his head, and his dog-skin upon his arm.
"Hark, ye red men! Roog! Bled! Adelrik! hark! Will ye not hear me
at last? Do you not see they are coming? Behold them cleaving the sky
like vultures. Hark to me. Let this miserable race be annihilated!
Ha, ha! it is you, Minau! it is you, Rochart ... ha! ha!" And
addressing the dead upon the Donon, he called upon them defiantly, as
if they were standing before him; and then fell back a step at a time,
striking the air, uttering imprecations, encouraging his phantoms, and
casting about him as if in close fight. The sight of this terrible
struggle against beings who were invisible caused Berbel to shudder
with fright, and to fancy her hair stiffening upon her head. She
sought to hide herself; but just at the moment a strange noise from
behind drew her attention, and her terror may be imagined when she saw
the hot spring bubbling with more than usual activity and sending out
clouds of steam, which rose and broke away in separate masses toward
the entrance of the cavern; and while these clouds like phantoms were
slowly advancing in close order, Yegof appeared upon the scene,
shouting hoarsely:--
"You come at last! you heard me then!"
Thus saying, he removed with an impatient effort all obstructions from
the mouth of the cave: the cold air rushed down the vault and the
steaming vapors rose far into the sky, writhing and glancing above the
cliff, as if the slain of that day and those of the ages gone by had
recommenced beyond the earth a battle that would never end.
Yegof, with face which appeared shrunken in the pale moonlight, his
sceptre held high, his great beard flowing down his breast, and his
eyes flaming, saluted each phantom with a wave of the hand, addressing
it by name:
"Hail, Bled! Roog, hail! and you, my brave men, all hail! The hour
you have been expecting for ages is at hand: the eagles are whetting
their beaks and the soil is thirsting for blood. Remember Blutfeld!"
[Illustration: YEGOF SALUTED EACH PHANTOM WITH SPARKLING EYES.]
At this point Berbel's terror seemed to hold her transfixed; but soon
the last volumes of gray mist disappeared out of the cavern and melted
into the sky. Seeing which the crazy montagnard marched fiercely into
the cave, and seating himself by the spring, with his great head
between his hands, and his elbows on his knees, looked down into the
boiling water with a haggard stare.
Kateline was now awake and venting her guttural moans; while
Wetterhexe, more dead than alive, was furtively watching the maniac
from the farthest corner of the cave.
"They have all gone up from the earth!" exclaimed Yegof, suddenly.
"All, all! They have gone to reanimate the courage of my youths, and
inspire them with contempt of death!"
And again lifting up his face, which seemed impressed with deep
anguish, he cried, fixing his wolfish eyes on Wetterhexe:--
"Oh, thou descendant of the sterile valkyries, thou who hast nurtured
within thy bosom no life-breath of warriors, nor ever filled their deep
goblets at the festive board, nor regaled them with the smoking flesh
of the wild boar, for what purpose art thou good? To spin shrouds for
the dead. Ha! take thy distaff and spin night and day; for thousands
of brave men are slumbering in the snow! ... They fought well....
Yes, they did all that men could do; but the time had not come, ... now
the ravens are fighting for their carcasses!"
Then in accents of uncontrollable rage, snatching the crown off his
head together with handfuls of hair--"Ah, cursed race," he exclaimed,
"will you always be barring our passage? Were it not for you we had
already conquered Europe; the red men would have been masters of the
world.... And I have bowed my head before the leader of this race of
curs.... I asked him for his daughter, instead of seizing and carrying
her away as the wolf carries the lamb! ... Ah! Huldrix, Huldrix!"
Then changing this rhapsody--"Listen, listen, valkyrie!" he cried in a
hoarse voice, and pointing his finger with great solemnity.
Wetterhexe listened. A great gust of wind rose up through the night,
shaking the old forest-trees heavy with their load of frost. Often and
often had the sorceress in the winter nights heard the soughing of the
north wind and paid it no attention, but now she was overwhelmed with
fear! And as she stood there all trembling, a hoarse cry was heard
without; and almost at the same time the raven Hans, sweeping beneath
the rock, set himself to describe great circles overhead, flapping his
wings with a frightened air, and uttering melancholy cries.
Yegof became pale as death. "Vod, Vod! what has thy son Luitprandt
done for thee? Why choose him rather than another?"
For some seconds he stood as though amazed: then, suddenly transported
by savage enthusiasm and brandishing his sceptre, he dashed out of the
cavern.
Two minutes afterward, Wetterhexe, standing at the entrance of the
rock, followed him with anxious eyes.
He went straight on, with neck stretched forward and long strides. You
would have thought him a wild beast upon the prowl. Hans went before
him, hopping from place to place.
In a moment they disappeared down the Blutfeld gorge.