The Erckmann-Chatrian Megapack: 20 Classic Novels and Short Stories (29 page)

“Confound that foolish Mercury!” he cried. “At this moment I ought to have been quiet at home in my own arm-chair, and Berbel, according to her praiseworthy custom, ought to be bringing me up upon a tray a cup of smoking hot coffee, while I am winding up my chapter upon the ancient armoury at Nideck. Instead of which, here I am floundering in holes, stumbling everywhere, and suppose I lost my way altogether and then broke my neck! There!—I said so! Was that a tree I knocked against? A hundred thousand bans and maledictions fall upon Mercury and Haas, the architect, who sent for me to look at it! and the scoundrels, too, who dug it up! I’ll lay any wager that the boasted Mercury is nothing but some defaced and corroded bit of stone, without either nose or legs—some shapeless deformity like that little Hesus last year at Marienthal. Oh, you architects! you architects!—you are always finding antiquities everywhere. Luckily I had not my spectacles on, or I should have smashed them against that tree; but now I shall be obliged to find a bed somewhere among the bushes. What a road this is!—nothing but ruts, and holes, and pits, and loose rocks and boulders!”

In one of those moments when the good man, getting exhausted, was stopping for breath, he thought he could hear the grating of a saw far down the valley. What was his joy when he became certain that it was that!

“Heaven be praised!” he cried, plucking up his spirits; “now to push on with halting steps. Now I shall get a little rest. What a lesson this will be for me! Providence had compassion upon my rheumatism. What an old fool to go and expose myself to have to lie out in the woods at my time of life, to ruin my health and undermine my constitution! I shall remember this! Never shall I forget this warning!”

In a quarter of an hour the noise of falling water became more distinct; then a faint light broke through the trees. Maître Bernard then found himself at the top of the wood; he observed below the heath a stream running down the winding valley as far as he could see, and just before him the saw-mill, with its long dark posts and beams crossing and recrossing in the gloom like a huge spider.

He crossed the high-arched bridge over the rushing dam, and looked through the little window into the woodman’s hut.

It was a low, dark shed leaning against a hollow in the rock. At the farther end of the natural cavity was a small pile of smouldering sawdust. In the front the boarded roof, weighted with heavy stones, descended to within three feet of the ground; in a corner at the right, a kind of box, full of dried heather; a few logs of oak, an axe, a massive bench, and other implements of toil, were lost in the shade. A resinous odour of pine-wood impregnated the air, and the ruddy smoke eddied through a fissure in the rock.

Whilst the good man was observing these objects, the woodman, coming out from the mill, saw him, and cried—

“Halloo!—who is that?”

“I beg your pardon; pray pardon me,” said my worthy uncle, rather startled. “I am a traveller who has lost his way.”

“Hey!” cried the other man; “good guide us! Is not that Maître Bernard, of Saverne? You are very welcome indeed, Maître Bernard. Don’t you know me?”

“No, indeed! How should I in this dark night?”

“
Parbleu!
—of course not! But I am Christian; I bring you your contraband snuff every fortnight. But come in, come in! We will soon get a light.”

They passed stooping under the little low door, and the woodman, having lighted a pine-torch, stuck it into a split iron rod to serve as a candlestick, and a bright light, clear and white as moonshine, filled the hut, lighting up every corner of it.

Christian, standing in shirt-sleeves, his broad chest uncovered, and with a pair of canvas trousers hitched up about his hips, looked a good-natured fellow enough; his tawny beard came down in a point to his waist; his huge bull head was covered with bristling brown hair; his small grey eyes inspired confidence.

“Take a seat, master,” he said, rolling a log of wood before the fire. “Are you hungry?”

“Why, you know, my lad, your mountain air does excite one’s appetite.”

“Very well; you are just in time. I have got some very good potatoes quite at your service.”

At the mention of potatoes Uncle Bernard could not help grimacing; he remembered, with the longing of affection, old Berbel’s good suppers, and had a difficulty in coming down to the humble realities before him.

Christian seemed to take no notice; he took five or six potatoes out of a sack, and put them into the embers, taking care to cover them entirely; then, sitting down on the hearthstone, he lighted his pipe.

“But just tell me, master, how is it that you are here to-night, at six leagues’ distance from Saverne, in the gorge of Nideck?”

“The gorge of Nideck!” cried my uncle Bernard, springing from his seat in great surprise.

“To be sure! You may see the ruins from here, about two gunshots distant.”

Master Bernard looked out, and really did recognise the ruins of Nideck, just as he had described them in the twenty-fourth chapter of his
History of Alsacian Antiquities
, with their high towers crumbling away at the foot, and dominating over the abyss into which the torrent falls.

“But I thought I was near Haslach!” he cried with amazement.

The woodcutter burst out laughing.

“Haslach!—you are two leagues away from it! I see how it is. You went wrong at the old oak-tree. You took the right instead of the left path. When you are in the woods you must look well about you. A few yards wrong at starting come to leagues at the end!”

Bernard Hertzog at this discovery was in consternation.

“Six leagues from Saverne,” he murmured, “and all mountains!—and if I have to go two more to-morrow, that will be eight!”

“Oh, don’t mind that! I will guide you to the road down the valley. And don’t forget. You are very fortunate.”

“Fortunate? You are joking with me, Christian.”

“Yes, you are lucky. You might have had to spend the night in the woods. There is a thunderstorm coming on from Schnéeberg; if that had overtaken you you might have had some reason to complain, with the rain at your back and thunder and lightning all round. But now you shall sleep in a good bed,” pointing to the box in the corner; “you will sleep there like a log, and to-morrow, when the sun is up, we will start; you will be rested, and you will get there in very good time.”

“You are very kind, Christian,” said Uncle Bernard with tears in his eyes. “Give me a potato, and then I will go to bed. I am more tired than anything else. I am not hungry. One hot potato will be quite enough for me.”

“Here is a couple as mealy as chestnuts. Taste that, master; take a small glass of kirschwasser, and then lie down. I have to set to work again. I have got to saw fifteen more planks before I can go to bed.”

Christian rose, set the bottle of kirschwasser on the window-sill, and went out. The alternate movement of the saw, which had for a time ceased, now recommenced amidst the rushing of the stream.

Maître Hertzog, astonished as he was to find himself in those remote solitudes between Dagsberg and the ruins of Nideck, sat long meditating what he must do to rejoin his household gods; then, gliding down the stream of his usual meditations, he went over the fabulous, heroic, or barbarous legends and chronicles of the former lords of that land. He went back to the Tribocci, that German nation settled about Strasbourg, remembering Clovis, Chilperic, Theodoric, Dagobert, the furious struggle between Brunehaut, Queen of Austrasia, and Frédégonde, queen of Chilperic of France, and many heroes and heroines besides. All these fierce personages passed in review before his eyes. The vague murmuring of the trees, the inky blackness of the rocks, favoured this strange invocation. All the distinguished personages of his chronicle were there, and the boar, and the wolf, and the bear were among them.

At last, unable to hold out any longer, the good man hung his three-cornered hat upon a peg in the wall and lay down upon the heath. The cricket sang its monotonous song upon the hearth, a few surviving sparks were running hither and thither in the smouldering fire, his eyelids dropped, and he slept a deep, sound sleep.

CHAPTER II

Maître Bernard Hertzog had slept a couple of hours, and the boiling of the water in the millrace alone competed with the noise of his loud snoring, when suddenly a guttural voice, arising in the midst of the deep silence, cried—

“Dröckteufel! Dröckteufel! have you forgotten everything?”

The voice was so piercing that Maître Bernard, waking with a sudden start, felt his hair creeping with horror. He raised himself upon his elbow and listened again with eyes starting with astonishment. The hut was as dark as a cellar; he listened, but not a breath, not a sound, came; only far away, far beyond the ruins, a dull, distant roar was heard among the mountains.

Bernard, with neck outstretched, heaved a deep sigh; in a minute he began to stammer out—

“Who is there? What do you want?”

But no answer came.

“It was a dream,” he said, falling back upon his heather couch. “I must have been lying upon my back. There is nothing at all in dreams and nightmares—nothing! nothing!”

But in the midst of the restored silence the same doleful cry was again repeated—

“Dröckteufel! Dröckteufel!”

And as Maître Bernard, fairly beside himself, was preparing for instant flight, but with his face to the wall, and unable to move from his couch, the voice, in a dissonant chant, with pauses and strange accents, went on—

“The Queen Faileube, espoused to our king, Chilperic—Queen Faileube, learning that Septimanie, the governess of the young princes, had conspired against the king’s life—Queen Faileube said to the lord, ‘My lord, the viper waits until you are asleep to give you a mortal wound. She has conspired with Sinnégisile and Gallomagus against your life! She has poisoned her husband, your faithful Jovius, to live with Dröckteufel. Let your anger come down upon her like lightning, and your vengeance with a bloody sword!’ And Chilperic, assembling all his council in the castle of Nideck, said, ‘We have cherished a viper; she has plotted our death. Let her be cut into three pieces. Let Dröckteufel, Sinnégisile, and Gallomagus perish with her! Let the ravens rejoice!’ And the vassals cried, ‘So let it be! The wrath of Chilperic is an abyss into which his enemies fall and perish!’ Then Septimanie was brought to be put to the torture and examined; a ring of iron was bound around her temples; it was tightened; her eyes started; her blood-dropping mouth murmured, ‘Lord king, I have offended. Dröckteufel, Gallomagus, and Sinnégisile have also conspired!’ And the following night a festoon of corpses dangled and swung from the towers of Nideck! The foul birds of prey rejoiced over the rich spoil. Dröckteufel, what would I not have done for thee? I would have had thee King of Austrasia, and thou hast forgotten me!”

The guttural voice sank down, and my uncle Bernard, more dead than alive, breathing a sigh of terror, murmured—

“Oh, I have never done anybody any wrong! I am only a poor old chronicler! Let me not die without absolution, far from the succour of the Church!”

The great wooden box full of heather seemed at every effort to escape to sink deeper and deeper. The poor man thought he was going down into a gulf, when, happily, Christian reappeared, crying—

“Well, Maître Bernard, what did I say? here is the storm.”

And now the hut was for an instant full of dazzling light, and my worthy uncle, who was lying facing the door, could see the whole valley lighted up, with its innumerable fir-trees crowded along the slopes down the valley as close as the grass of the fields, its rocks piled up on the banks of the river, which was rolling its sulphurous blue waves over the rounded boulders of the ravine, and the towers of Nideck rising proudly in the air fifteen hundred feet above.

Then the darkness covered all up again. That was the first flash.

But in that instant of time he caught sight of a strange figure crouching at the end of the hut without being able to make out what it really was.

Great drops were beginning to patter on the roof. Christian lighted a rush, and seeing Maître Bernard with his hands convulsively clutching the edge of his box of heather, and his face covered with beads of cold sweat, he cried—

“Why! Master Bernard! what is the matter with you?”

But, without answering, he merely pointed to the figure huddled up in the corner; it was an old woman, so very advanced in extreme old age, so yellow and wrinkled, with such a hooked nose, fingers so skinny, and lips so lean, that she looked like an old owl with all its feathers gone. There were only a few hairs left on the back of her head; the rest of her skull was as bare of covering as an egg. A threadbare ragged linen gown covered her poor skeleton figure. She was sightless, and the expression of her face was one of constant reverie.

Christian, noticing my uncle’s inquiring look, turned his head and said quietly—

“It’s old Irmengarde, the old teller of legends. She is waiting to die till the old tower falls into the torrent.”

Uncle Bernard, stupefied, looked at the woodman; he did not seem inclined to joke; on the contrary, he looked serious.

“Come, Christian,” said the good man, “you mean to have your joke.”

“Joke! no indeed, old and feeble as you see her, that old woman knows everything; the spirit of the ruins is in her. She was living when the old lords of the castle lived.”