“You are out of your mind! These are the devil’s snares! And who tells you that the girl has ceased to live? That she has committed a crime? Thanks be to God, Gottfriede came to me, she confessed to me penitently, and now she is in a convent!” At this moment the assembly, already deeply excited, was somewhat startled by the entrance of the steward, who looked terrified, went up to the Count’s mother, and whispered some words into her ear. She could not repress a cry.
“Dead!” she said.
“Yes, she is dead, and I also must die!” cried Hermann in accents of despair.
The young bride, offended at this avowal of a previous attachment, had at first stood aloof; now, consulting her own heart alone, she thought of contesting the right of this invisible rival, and with open arms drew near the Count; but he pushed her aside rudely.
The bishop began his exorcisms. While he was repeating the prescribed words, the Count asked:—
“What do you want of me, Gottfriede? Forgive me and we will all pray for you. You are seeping and kissing me by turns, but your kisses are nothing but bitterness and sorrow to me, since I have given my name to another, since another is my—”
He could not complete the sentence. Uttering a sharp cry he fell at full length to the ground, and on his neck appeared a long, bluish mark, such as is seen in strangled persons.
The great Nichus is, as we have seen, the master, the despot, the Wassermann, par excellence, of all this watery, dark world, peopled by Nixen and Undines. His authority is, moreover, by no means limited to the exercise of judicial functions; his will, constantly under the influence of an ill-regulated appetite, is law for everybody; the male Nixen are his Court, and his harem is kept full by the fairest among those women who become his own by suicide. This greenish-complexioned Sardanapalus is said to celebrate incredibly monstrous orgies with his drowned Odalisques.
He is, in reality, Niord, the Scandinavian god, and this Niord again is, originally, one of those old Roman emperors, who were deified, and whose portraits Petronius has left us drawn in mud and blood.