The castle, which in bygone days had so often opened its hospitable gates to him and his court, within whose halls many a gladsome feast had been held, of whose magnificence and splendour old chronicles tell us—this castle still kept watch over the land with unbroken pinnacles, but Barbarossa knocked not at its gate.
Gently the horses sank to the earth, and halted at a hidden door in the mountain side.
The Emperor struck the stone with his sword, so that a loud echo answered from the hollow interior. Then the rocky door opened, and Barbarossa and his faithful warriors entered the spacious hall of the Kyffhäuser Mountain. The rock had not long closed behind them when a gentle tapping was heard, the magic gate swung open, and the lovely Gela entered, arrayed in bridal attire as she had been laid in the tomb.
The hand of death had touched her heart, but had not quenched her love. When Frederick's cry reached her ear, she had opened her eyes as out of a deep sleep, and had left the vault to seek her beloved with the swiftness of a spirit's tread. Now she stands before him in unchanged grace and beauty.
Barbarossa's youthful dream was fulfilled. Gela, his first love, was now at his side to tend him and bless him for ever as she could never have done on earth. It was she, the faithful one, who ruled henceforth in the magic kingdom of the Kyffhäuser, and cared for the beloved hero and his trusty band. It was she who knew when Barbarossa's heart yearned over the memories of his glorious past. Then she would lead the knights—his faithful comrades in the Holy War—into his room. They would range themselves round the marble table at which Barbarossa sat, with his long white beard flowing round him like imperial ermine, and over the golden goblets, filled from the exhaustless stores of the mountain cellars, they talked with the hero about the glorious days that they had spent together, about "the golden age" of the Holy German Empire. And the minstrels, who had been wont to go with him to the Holy Land, and had entered with him the enchanted mountain of the "Golden Meadow," would strike their harps, and the song of the future, which still slumbered in their souls, rose to their lips and echoed loudly through the enchanted arches of the Kyffhäuser Mountain.
When Barbarossa's heart longed for news of the fatherland, Gela would pass at midnight out through the door in the rock, down through the "Golden Meadow," and listen at many a door, and look through many a window. Then all that she heard there of sad lamentation or joyous hope she would faithfully pour into the Emperor's ear on her return. And what Gela failed to find out was seen by other eyes and heard by other ears. Just as once Odin's ravens flew down from the dwelling of the gods to the home of men to tell the heavenly Ruler of all that happened on the earth, so did the ravens that built their nests in the clefts of Kyffhäuser hover through the plains to hear of joy and sorrow, and bear the tidings back in silence to their rocky home.
BARBAROSSA AND GELA IN THE KYFFHÄUSER.
F. C., p. 26.
But at the still hour of midnight, when the mountain opened, and the little dwarfs who dwelt secretly among Barbarossa's vaulted halls slipped out into the moonlight, then the wise birds opened their mouths, and the little friends—like Solomon, learned in the languages of birds—heard all that the ravens told. The dwarfs in their turn brought the news to the old Emperor, before whom they appeared from time to time to fill his treasury with newly-coined gold.