The Erckmann-Chatrian Megapack: 20 Classic Novels and Short Stories (143 page)

Thus terminated, this great day, after the mountaineers had proved that they had not degenerated from their ancestors.

Other events, not less important, were soon to succeed those which had already taken place: for in this world, when one obstacle is surmounted, others present themselves. Human life resembles a restless sea: one wave follows another from the old world to the new, and nothing arrests its ever-lasting movement.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE CAVE OF LUITPRANDT

All through the battle, till the close of night, the good people of Grandfontaine had observed the poor crazy Yégof standing upon the crest of the Little Donon, and, his crown on his head, with his sceptre held aloft, like a Merovingian king, shouting commands to his phantom armies. What passed through his mind when he saw the utter rout of the Germans no one can say; but at the last cannon-shot he disappeared. Where did he betake himself? On this point the people of Tiefenbach have the following story:

At that time there lived upon the Bocksberg two singular creatures—sisters—one named “little Kateline,” and the other “great Berbel.” These creatures, who were almost in tatters, had taken up their abode in the “Cave of Luitprandt,” so called, according to old chronicles, because the German king, before invading Alsace, had caused to be interred in that immense vault of red sandstone the savage chiefs who had fallen in the battle of Blutfeld. The hot spring which always bubbles in the middle of the cavern protected the eerie sisters from the sharp colds of winter; and the woodcutter, Daniel Horn, of Tiefenbach, had been good enough to fill up the largest entrance to the rock with heaps of brushwood. By the side of the hot spring there is another, cold as ice and clear as crystal. Kateline, who always drank of its waters, was scarce four foot high, thick-set and bloated; and her cowering figure, her round eyes and enormous goitre, rendered her whole appearance peculiarly suggestive of a big turkey-hen in a reverie. Every Sunday she carried into Tiefenbach a great basket, which the people of the place filled with boiled potatoes, crusts of bread, and occasionally, on high days, with cakes and other remains of their festivals;—with which she reascended breathlessly to her rocky home, muttering, gibbering, and behaving in the absurdest way. Meanwhile Berbel took care to drink from the cold spring: she was gaunt, one-eyed, scraggy as a bat, with a flat nose, large ears, a gleaming eye, and thrived upon the booty obtained by her sister. Seldom did she descend from the Bocksberg, except in July, at the time of greatest heat—when she proceeded to launch her incantations—her enchanting-wand a withered thistle—against the crops of those who had failed to contribute to her sister’s basket. These imprecations were always believed to be followed by dire storms, hail, and destructive vermin without stint: whence they came to be dreaded as the plague, and the hag herself to be regarded as a weather-witch (
Wetterhexe
), while “little Kateline” was looked upon as the good genius of Tiefenbach and its neighborhood. In such wise Berbel folded her arms and took her ease in her cave, while her sister went gibbering along the highways.

Unfortunately for the sisters, Yégof had for many years established his winter-quarters in “Luitprandt’s cavern;” and it was thence he set forth every spring on a visit to his innumerable châteaux and feudatories, as far as Geierstein in the Hundsrück. Every year, therefore, toward the end of November, after the first snows, he arrived with his raven, to the accompaniment of piercing cries from Wetterhexe.

“What have you to grumble at?” he would say, while installing himself in the place of honor. “Are you not intruders upon my domain, and am I not truly good to permit two such useless old hags (
Valkyries
) to stay in the Valhalla of my fathers?”

Then Berbel, in a rage, used to overwhelm him with abuse, while Kateline gave vent to her dissatisfaction in thick unintelligible utterances; but he, regardless of both, lit his old box pipe and set himself to describe his endless peregrinations to the ghosts of the German warriors buried in the cavern sixteen centuries before, calling upon each of them by name, and addressing them as personages still living. From this it will be understood with what disgust the arrival of the maniac came to be regarded by Kateline and Berbel; in fact for both it was nothing less than a calamity.

Now in the year we are speaking of, Yégof, having failed to return to them at the proper time, induced the sisters to believe that he was dead and to rejoice at the idea of seeing no more of him. But for many days Wetterhexe had remarked an extraordinary movement going on in the neighboring gorges, and men marching off in bodies, shouldering their muskets, from the sides of Falkenstein and Donon. Clearly something was taking place out of the common. Recollecting that the year before Yégof had informed the phantoms of the cave that his armies, in countless hosts, were coming to invade the country, the sorceress was seized with a vague apprehension and anxiety to learn the cause of so much agitation; but no one came up to the cave, and Kateline having made her rounds on the previous Sunday, could not have been induced to stir out for the gift of a kingdom.

In this state of apprehension, Wetterhexe went and came upon the side of the mountain and became hourly more restless and irritable. During the whole of that Saturday events assumed quite another aspect. From nine o’clock in the morning deep and heavy explosions began to growl like a continuous storm among the thousand echoes of the mountain; while far away in the direction of Donon, the swift lightnings swept up across the sky among the peaks; then toward night the discharges deepening in intensity filled the silent gorges with an indescribable tumult. At every report the Hengst, the Gantzlee, the Giromani, and the Grosmann cliffs seemed to echo to their lowest depths.

“What can it be?” cried Berbel. “Has the end of the world come?”

Then re-entering her lurking-place, and finding Kateline crouched in her corner and munching a potato, Berbel shook her roughly and hissed out: “Fool! have you got no ears? Is there anything that you fear? You are good for nothing but eating, drinking, and mumbling. Oh, you idiot!”

She snatched away the potato in a rage, and then seated herself by the side of the hot spring, which was sending up its gray fumes to the roof. Half an hour after, the darkness having become intense and the cold excessive, she made a fire of brushwood, which shed its pale gleams upon the blocks of red sandstone and lit up the farthest corner of the cave, where Kateline was now asleep, huddled in the straw, with her chin upon her knees. Without, the noisy tumult had ceased. Then withdrawing the brushwood curtain from the mouth of the cave, she peered out into the darkness, and returned to crouch down, by the spring. With her large lips compressed, her eyes closed, and the great round wrinkles playing upon her cheeks, she drew round her knees an old woollen covering, and appeared to fall asleep. Throughout the cavern there was no sound, except that of the congealed vapor, which fell back at long intervals into the spring with a strange splashing noise.

This silence lasted for about two hours; midnight was approaching, when all of a sudden a distant sound of footsteps, mingled with discordant cries, was heard outside the cave. Berbel listened, and at once perceived that they were human cries. Then she rose, trembling, and, armed with her thistle-wand, proceeded to the entrance of the cave; whence, through the screen of brushwood, she saw, at fifty paces distant, Yégof advancing toward her in the moonlight. He was alone, but gesticulating and waving his sceptre, as if myriads of invisible beings were about him.

“Hark, ye red men!” he was shrieking, with, beard sticking up on end, his hair streaming about his head, and his dog-skin upon his arm. “Hark, ye red men! Roog! Bled! Adelrik! hark! Will ye not hear me at last? Do you not see they are coming? Behold them cleaving the sky like vultures. Hark to me. Let this miserable race be annihilated! Ha, ha! it is you, Minau! it is you, Rochart…ha! ha!” And addressing the dead upon the Donon, he called upon them defiantly, as if they were standing before him; and then fell back a step at a time, striking the air, uttering imprecations, encouraging his phantoms, and casting about him as if in close fight. The sight of this terrible struggle against beings who were invisible caused Berbel to shudder with fright, and to fancy her hair stiffening upon her head. She sought to hide herself; but just at the moment a strange noise from behind drew her attention, and her terror may be imagined when she saw the hot spring bubbling with more than usual activity and sending out clouds of steam, which rose and broke away in separate masses toward the entrance of the cavern; and while these clouds like phantoms were slowly advancing in close order, Yégof appeared upon the scene, shouting hoarsely:

“You come at last! you heard me then!”

Thus saying, he removed with an impatient effort all obstructions from the mouth of the cave: the cold air rushed down the vault and the steaming vapors rose far into the sky, writhing and glancing above the cliff, as if the slain of that day and those of the ages gone by had recommenced beyond the earth a battle that would never end.

Yégof, with face which appeared shrunken in the pale moonlight, his sceptre held high, his great beard flowing down his breast, and his eyes flaming, saluted each phantom with a wave of the hand, addressing it by name:

“Hail, Bled! Roog, hail! and you, my brave men, all hail! The hour you have been expecting for ages is at hand: the eagles are whetting their beaks and the soil is thirsting for blood. Remember Blutfeld!”

At this point Berbel’s terror seemed to hold her transfixed; but soon the last volumes of gray mist disappeared out of the cavern and melted into the sky. Seeing which the crazy montagnard marched fiercely into the cave, and seating himself by the spring, with his great head between his hands, and his elbows on his knees, looked down into the boiling water with a haggard stare.

Kateline was now awake and venting her guttural moans; while Wetterhexe, more dead than alive, was furtively watching the maniac from the farthest corner of the cave.

“They have all gone up from the earth!” exclaimed Yégof, suddenly. “All, all! They have gone to reanimate the courage of my youths, and inspire them with contempt of death!”

And again lifting up his face, which seemed impressed with deep anguish, he cried, fixing his wolfish eyes on Wetterhexe:

“Oh, thou descendant of the sterile valkyries, thou who hast nurtured within thy bosom no life-breath of warriors, nor ever filled their deep goblets at the festive board, nor regaled them with the smoking flesh of the wild boar, for what purpose art thou good? To spin shrouds for the dead. Ha! take thy distaff and spin night and day; for thousands of brave men are slumbering in the snow!… They fought well.… Yes, they did all that men could do; but the time had not come,…now the ravens are fighting for their carcasses!”

Then in accents of uncontrollable rage, snatching the crown off his head together with handfuls of hair—“Ah, cursed race,” he exclaimed, “will you always be barring our passage? Were it not for you we had already conquered Europe; the red men would have been masters of the world.… And I have bowed my head before the leader of this race of curs.… I asked him for his daughter, instead of seizing and carrying her away as the wolf carries the lamb!… Ah! Huldrix, Huldrix!”

Then changing this rhapsody—“Listen, listen, valkyrie!” he cried in a hoarse voice, and pointing his finger with great solemnity.

Wetterhexe listened. A great gust of wind rose up through the night, shaking the old forest-trees heavy with their load of frost. Often and often had the sorceress in the winter nights heard the soughing of the north wind and paid it no attention, but now she was overwhelmed with fear! And as she stood there all trembling, a hoarse cry was heard without; and almost at the same time the raven Hans, sweeping beneath the rock, set himself to describe great circles overhead, flapping his wings with a frightened air, and uttering melancholy cries.

Yégof became pale as death. “Vod, Vod! what has thy son Luitprandt done for thee? Why choose him rather than another?”

For some seconds he stood as though amazed: then, suddenly transported by savage enthusiasm and brandishing his sceptre, he dashed out of the cavern.

Two minutes afterward, Wetterhexe, standing at the entrance of the rock, followed him with anxious eyes.

He went straight on, with neck stretched forward and long strides. You would have thought him a wild beast upon the prowl. Hans went before him, hopping from place to place.

In a moment they disappeared down the Blutfeld gorge.

CHAPTER XIX

GASPARD’S LETTER

Toward two o’clock the next morning, snow began to fall. At daybreak the Germans had left Grandfontaine, Framont, and even Schirmeck. In the distance, on the plains of Alsace, could be seen the black lines, which indicated their retreating battalions.

Hullin arose early and made the round of the bivouacs. He stopped for a few seconds on the plateau, to look at the cannons in position, the sleeping partisans, and the watchful sentries; then, satisfied with his inspection, he re-entered the farm, where Louise and Catherine were still asleep.

The gray light was spreading everywhere. A few wounded in the next room were growing feverish; they were calling for their wives and children. Soon the hum of voices and the noise of busy feet broke the stillness of the night. Catherine and Louise awoke. They saw Jean-Claude sitting in a corner of the window watching them, and ashamed of having slept longer than he, they arose and approached him.