In the mean while, he found a good place of refuge; he went to see Weidmann, at Mattenheim, for a couple of days.
CHAPTER XVI.
A BLACK WAVE.
On Sunday evening a bustling crowd was streaming along the white road, up and down the banks of the river, and to and fro between the vineyards, all seeming to have one end in view.
Sonnenkamp, wrapped in his cloak, was sitting on the flat roof of his house, gazing with a sensation of dizziness upon the surrounding landscape. Once he walked to the eaves. His brain reeled, and he wanted to throw himself off.
So then it was all over, the hard thinking and everything! Nevertheless he stepped back again, and sat upon the flat roof until nightfall.
Suddenly his ear was struck by howls, cat-calls, hootings, rattling and clashing, as though hell itself had been let loose.
He sprang to his feet. Are these sounds within him? Is this all imagination? He hears them distinctly; the noise comes from beneath. It rises from the road, and he descries by the torchlight fantastic figures with black faces. Is that, too, only imagination? Have they come hither from the other world, those creatures with human forms?
"You must leave the country!"
"Begone to your blacks!"