Then would Berbel, aroused to fury, overwhelm him with reproach and insult, and Kateline look offended; but he, careless of the storm he raised, would only light his old boxwood pipe, and relate his far-off wanderings among the souls of the German warriors, who, for sixteen centuries, lay buried in the cavern, calling them by name, and speaking to them as to men yet living. You may imagine with what delight Berbel and Kateline looked forward to the coming of the fool with his dismal tales.
But this year, Yegof had not come, and the sisters believed him dead, and duly rejoiced over the prospect of seeing him no more. Nevertheless, the Wetterhexe had observed the agitation in the valleys, the crowds of men, musket on shoulder, leaving Falkenstein and Donon. Surely, something strange had happened; and the sorceress, calling to mind that the preceding year Yegof had related to the spirits of his warriors how his countless armies would soon invade the land, felt a vague uneasiness. She would fain have learned the cause of the movement around her; but Kateline having made her tour the Sunday before, would not again budge from her home for an empire, and no one ever climbed to the cavern.
In this frame of mind Berbel came and went, wandered restlessly about the cave, growing hourly more uneasy and irritable. But during Saturday she had enough to think on. From nine o'clock in the morning, heavy and deep peals rang like thunder over the mountain side, and awoke the thousand echoes of the valleys; far away toward Donon rapid flashes crossed what sky appeared between the peaks; and as night approached, yet louder sounds rolled through every gorge, and the hollow voices of Hengst, of Gantzlée, Giromani and Grossmann replied.
"What can all this be?" asked Berbel of herself, "can the day of doom have come?"
Then returning to the cavern and finding Kateline huddled in a corner munching a potato, she shook her rudely and hissed:
"Idiot! hearest thou nothing? Fearest thou nothing? Carest thou for nothing but eating and drinking?"
She dashed the potato furiously to the ground, and sat herself trembling by the hot spring, which sent its grey vapors to the roof. Half an hour later, the darkness growing deeper, and the cold intense, she lighted a fire of brushwood, which threw its pale flashes over the vault of red stone, and pierced to the end of the cavern, where Kateline slept with her feet buried in a heap of straw, and her chin resting on her knees. Without, all noise had ceased. The storm-witch pulled aside the briars at the entrance, and gazed down the mountain side; then she returned to her post by the fire, her thin lips set tightly together, and her eyelids closed; she drew an old woolen coverlet over her knees, and seemed to sleep. No sound broke the stillness but the dripping of the condensed steam falling from the vault back to its source with a melancholy plash.
So lasted the silence for hours. Midnight was nearing, when suddenly the sound of footsteps, mingled with discordant noises, started Berbel from her slumber. She listened, and heard the cry of a human voice. She arose trembling, and, armed with a huge thorn branch, glided to the opening; there, pushing aside the briars, she saw in the moonlight the fool Yegof advancing alone, but writhing as if in agony, and beating the air with his sceptre, as if thousands of invisible beings surrounded him.
"To the rescue, Roug, Bléd, Adelrick!" he shouted in tones that pierced the cold air like the clangor of an iron bell, his matted beard and hair waving the while, and his dog-skin cloak folded like a buckler around his left arm; "to the rescue! Follow me to the death! See you not who are coming, cleaving the skies like eagles? On, men of the red beards! Crush this race of dogs! Ah! Minan, Rochart, are ye here?"
And then he called with savage shouts, upon all the dead of Donon, defying them as if they were really there; then he recoiled step by step, still striking the air, hurling curses, urging unseen armies to the fight, and struggling as if surrounded by foes. A cold sweat poured from Berbel's brow, she felt her hair rise upon her head, and she would have fled; but at the moment a strange murmuring arose within the cave, and, to her horror, she saw the hot spring boiling fiercely, and masses of vapor rising from it and advancing to the entrance of the cave.