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Page 21
"Quite well."
"Do you see anything near?"
"No."
"Well, there is a reason for that. You have driven away the Black Plague!
Every year at the second attack there she was holding her feet between
her hands. By night she lighted a fire; she warmed herself and boiled
roots. She bore a curse with her. This morning the very first thing which
I did was to get up here. I climbed up the beacon tower; I looked well
all round; the old hag was nowhere to be seen. I shaded my eyes with my
hand. I looked up and down, right and left, and everywhere; not a sign of
the creature anywhere. She had scented you evidently."
And the good fellow, in a fit of enthusiasm, shook me warmly by the hand,
crying with unchecked emotion--
"Ah, Fritz, how glad I am that I brought you here! The witch _will_ be
sold, eh?"
Well, I confess I felt a little ashamed that I had been all my life
such a very well-deserving young man without knowing anything of the
circumstance myself.
"So, Sperver," I said, "the count has spent a good night?"
"A very good one."
"Then I am very well pleased. Let us go down."
We again traversed the high parapet, and I was now better able to examine
this way of access, the ramparts of which arose from a prodigious depth;
and they were extended along the sharp narrow ridge of the rock down to
the very bottom of the valley. It was a long flight of jagged precipitous
steps descending from the wolf's den, or rather eagle's nest, down to the
deep valley below.
Gazing down I felt giddy, and recoiling in alarm to the middle of the
platform, I hastily descended down the path which led to the main
building.
We had already traversed several great corridors when a great open door
stood before us. I looked in, and descried, at the top of a double
ladder, the little gnome Knapwurst, whose strange appearance had
struck me the night before.
The hall itself attracted my attention by its imposing aspect. It was
the receptacle of the archives of the house of Nideck, a high, dark,
dusty apartment, with long Gothic windows, reaching from the angle of
the ceiling to within a couple of yards from the floor.
There were collected along spacious shelves, by the care of the old
abbots, not only all the documents, title-deeds, and family genealogies
of the house of Nideck, establishing their rights and their alliances,
and connections with all the great historic families of Germany, but
besides these there were all the chronicles of the Black Forest, the
collected works of the old Minnesinger, and great folio volumes from the
presses of Gutenberg and Faust, entitled to equal veneration on account
of their remarkable history and of the enduring solidity of their
binding. The deep shadows of the groined vaults, their arches divided by
massive ribs, and descending partly down the cold grey walls, reminded
one of the gloomy cloisters of the Middle Ages. And amidst these
characteristic surroundings sat an ugly dwarf on the top of his ladder,
with a red-edged volume upon his bony knees, his head half-buried in a
rough fur cap, small grey eyes, wide misshapen mouth, humps on back and
shoulders, a most uninviting object, the familiar spirit--the rat,
as Sperver would have it--of this last refuge of all the learning
belonging to the princely race of Nideck.
But a truly historical importance belonged to this chamber in the long
series of family portraits, filling almost entirely one side of the
ancient library. All were there, men and women; from Hugh the Wolf to
Yeri-Hans, the present owner; from the first rough daub of barbarous
times to the perfect work of the best modern painters.
My attention was naturally drawn in that direction.
Hugh I., a bald-headed figure, seemed to glare upon you like a wolf
stealing upon you round the corner of a wood. His grey bloodshot eyes,
his red beard, and his large hairy ears gave him a fearful and ferocious
aspect.
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