Then Berbel would become furious, and overwhelm him with taunts and abuse, while Kateline would sit clucking with an angry look; but he, without taking any notice of them, lit his pipe—made of old boxwood—and began to relate his distant peregrinations to the souls of the German warriors interred in the cavern sixteen centuries ago, calling them by their names, and speaking to them like living beings. I leave you to imagine whether Berbel and Kateline saw the fool arrive with pleasure; to them it was a positive calamity. Now, this year, Yégof not having come, the two sisters thought he was dead, and were rejoicing in the idea of never seeing him any more. During the last few days, however, Wetterhexe had remarked the agitation that prevailed in the neighbouring gorges; people departing in large bodies, gun on shoulder, from the regions of the Falkenstein and the Donon. Evidently something out of the common was taking place. The witch, remembering that the year before Yégof had related to the souls of the warriors that his innumerable followers were shortly going to invade the country, felt a sort of vague uneasiness. She would have given anything to know the reason of this unusual disturbance, but no one came up to the rock where they dwelt, and Kateline having gone her usual journey the Sunday before, would not have stirred for an empire.
In this state of things, Wetterhexe wandered over the mountain-side, getting more and more anxious and distraught.
During the whole of this particular Saturday, things went even further. From nine o'clock in the morning, loud and heavy explosions rolled like the sound of a tempest amid the thousand echoes of the mountain; and in the distance, towards the Donon, swift lightnings flashed across the sky between the tall tops of the mountains; then, towards night, noises still more deep and formidable resounded through the silent gorges. At each explosion, the summits of the Hengst, the Gantzlée, the Giromani, the Grosmann, were heard to echo back their answer through the very depths of the abyss.
"What is that?" asked Berbel, of herself. "Is it the end of the world?"
Then, re-entering the cavern, and seeing Kateline squatting in her corner, nibbling a potato, she shook her roughly, exclaiming, in a hissing voice: "Idiot! do you, then, hear nothing? You are not afraid of anything—not you! You eat, you drink, you cluck! Oh! you monster!"
She snatched her potato furiously away, and sat down, quite trembling with passion, by the warm spring which was sending up its grey clouds to the vaulted roof of the cavern.
Half an hour after, it having grown dark, and the cold excessive, she lit a fire of brushwood, which threw a pale and flickering light over the blocks of red stone, to the very end of the cavern where Kateline was now sleeping, with her feet in the straw, and her knees up to her chin. Outside every sound had ceased. Wetterhexe pushed aside the bushes at the entrance, to cast a look upon the mountain-side; then she returned and squatted again beside the fire, her large mouth closely compressed, her flabby eyelids shut, forming large circular wrinkles round her cheeks, she drew over her knees an old woollen coverlet, and seemed to be taking a doze. Not a sound was to be heard, save at long intervals, the faint murmur of the condensed vapour falling back from the vault to the spring.
This death-like silence lasted for about two hours; midnight was approaching, when, all at once, a distant sound of footsteps, mingled with discordant clamours, was heard on the mountain-side. Berbel listened; she recognised the sound of the human voice. Then rising, all of a tremble, and armed with her large thistle, she glided to the entrance of the rock, pushed the bushes aside, and saw, at the distance of fifty paces, the fool Yégof, advancing in the bright moonlight. Flourishing his sceptre in the air, he was calling upon his followers, and fighting and struggling as if he were in the thick of a battle. This fearful conflict with invisible beings struck Berbel with superstitious terror; she felt her hair stand on end, and would have fled and hid herself, but, at the same instant, a confused murmur caused her to turn suddenly round, and judge of her alarm when she saw the hot spring boiling more than usual, and clouds of steam rise from it, then detach themselves and move in floating masses towards the door.
And whilst, like phantoms, these thick clouds were slowly advancing, Yégof appeared, exclaiming, in a sharp voice: "At last you are here. You have heard me!"