Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348

by Various

Conclusion.

At the upper end of the large Gothic room, forming the interior of the town-hall of Hammelburg, which was formally prepared as a court of trial, sat upon a raised part of the flooring in his chair of state, the Ober-Amtmann; before him were placed, at a velvet-behung table, his schreibers or secretaries; beside him sat, upon a low cushioned stool, his daughter, the fair Fraulein Bertha, surrounded by her tirewomen, who remained standing behind her.

The presence of the young Fraulein was of rare occurrence upon occasions of judicial ceremony in the old town-hall. But a solemn appeal to her testimony had been made by the witchfinder; and her father, whose sense of justice considered that a matter of accusation of so heavy and serious a nature as that of witchcraft, should be investigated in all its bearings, had commanded her presence. Her heart, full of the purest milk of human kindness, revolted, however, from witnessing the progress of such terrible proceedings—the justice of which her simple mind, tutored according to the dark prejudices of the age, never once doubted, but which curdled her blood with horror. And she sat pale and sad, with downcast eyes, scarcely daring to raise them upon the crowd that filled the hall, much less upon the most conspicuous object in the scene before her—the unhappy being against whom all curses, all evil feelings, all insane desires of blood and death, were then directed. Perhaps there was another reason also, which, almost unconsciously, caused her to keep her eyes fixed upon the earth; perhaps she feared that they might meet two other mild blue eyes, the expression of which was that of a deep—far too deep—an interest; for it caused her heart to beat, and her spirit to be troubled; and her bosom to heave and sigh, she knew not wherefore: unless, indeed, she were, in truth, bewitched.

In the centre of the hall was placed the accused woman. She was seated upon a rude three-legged stool, which was firmly fixed upon a raised flooring, elevated about three feet from the ground—her face turned towards her judge. A slight chain passed round the middle of her body, and fastened her down to her seat. She was still attired in the dark hood and cloak which had been her customary dress, and sat, with head bent downwards, and her hands clasped languidly upon her knees, as if resigned, in the bitterness of her despair, to meet the cruel fate that awaited her.

Below, was a compact and turbulent crowd of the lower orders of the town, which was with difficulty kept, by the pikemen, within the limits assigned to it; and which, from time to time, let forth low howls against the supposed sorceress, that increased, like the crescendo of distant thunder, and then died away again.

On either side, towards the upper end, were ranged upon benches some of the more reputable bourgeois and their spouses, all decked out in their finest braveries, as if they were present at a theatrical show, or a church mystery: and, in truth, the representation about to be given, was but little more in their own eyes, than a sort of show got up for their especial gratification.

Guarded by two pikemen, stood the cripple—his teeth set firmly, although his lips quivered with excitement—his light eyes glaring fiercely around with an air of savage exultation, and gleaming, as it were, with a pale phosphoric fire, from out of the dark ground of his swarthy face and lank black hair. He moved restlessly and uneasily upon his withered limbs, clenching by fits and starts his rosary from his bosom, and murmuring a hasty, and—to judge by the wildness of his eyes, that showed how his mind was fixed upon far other thoughts—a vain prayer. He rolled also his head and the upper part of his body continually backwards and forwards, like a wild beast fretting in his cage.

Among the more prominent of the crowd, whom the favour of the guards had allowed to push beyond the assigned limits, or whom reasons, connected with the trial, required to come forwards, stood “Gentle Gottlob.” His brow was overclouded with sadness, for he felt in how fearful a pass this horrible denunciation had placed the woman whom he had so long regarded with attachment. His mild blue eye was more melancholy than of wont; and yet, in spite of the trouble of his mind, he was unable to withdraw his looks from that bright loadstone of his affections, whose sadness seemed to sympathize with his own. At least, his heart would fain persuade him that there was mysterious sympathy in their mutual dejection.

The principal personages concerned in the awful question at issue, occupied, thus, their respective positions in the old town-hall; when, after a long and troubled pause, during which silence was with difficulty obtained among the more tumultuous portion of the crowd at the lower end of the hall, one of the schreibers rose, and read, from an interminable strip of parchment which he held in his hand, the act of accusation against the female known under the popular designation of “Mother Magdalena,” as attainted of the foul crime of witchcraft, of the casting of spells and malefices to the annoyance and destruction of her fellow-creatures, of consorting with spirits of darkness, and of lascivious intercourse with the arch-fiend himself. For so ran, at that time, the tenor of the accusation directed against the unhappy women suspected of this imaginary crime.

The act of accusation was long, and richly interlarded with all those interminable complications of legal phraseology, which seem ever, at all times, and in all nations, to have been the necessary concomitants of all legal proceedings. The reading of the act, however, being at last terminated, the town-beggar, commonly known by the familiar name of Black Claus the witchfinder, Schwartzer-Claus, or Claus Schwartz, as he was usually designated among the people, was summoned to stand forward as the denouncer of the aforesaid Magdalena, and to substantiate his charge.