To the surprise of the builders, every morning they found their yesterday’s labour undone, and the stones and other materials carried up to where the graveyard now is.
The Pastor ordered night-watches to guard the new works, and punish the guilty offenders.
The night closed around them, and the hours wore on without anything happening to alarm the watchmen, when suddenly one exclaimed that the stars were moving towards them. The eyes of all then beheld luminous flakes, which, coming nearer and nearer, grew into angels, with bright shining wings, and love on their brows.
The angels approached and gathered the stones, then bore them to the hill-top, after which they receded again into heaven.
The materials thus consecrated were used for the purpose so clearly pointed out, and the chapel was raised on the top of the hill, instead of being hid in the valley beneath.
A sharp turn to the left brings us to Bremm, an old rotten town, with a good church. The people of Bremm seem more squalid than those of any other town on the Moselle; whether they merely wish to be in keeping with their houses or not, we did not ascertain.
Opposite Bremm is a fair promontory, on whose sloping green turf the ruins of Kloster Stuben are seen. The hills on the left-hand bank bend round in the form of a horse-shoe, and the river flows at their base. The hills are very superb, of considerable height; and their grand sombre mass contrasts with the green fields around Kloster Stuben.
This horse-shoe form constantly occurs on the Moselle; and not only is the bend of the stream in the form of a horse-shoe, but the enclosed space is usually shaped precisely as it would be had it been formed of soft lava, and stamped by the gigantic foot of a horse. Perhaps the Wild Huntsman rode here while the volcanoes were still in full force.
The first Abbess of Kloster Stuben was Gisela the Fair; her father, a knight, built the cloister, and endowed it as a resting-place for his poor daughter Gisela, who thus lost her lover:—