The countess stood before the chapel door, her breast heaving with emotion. She caught hold of the abbe's hand with a strong grasp, and kept him from turning the key in the lock. She trembled in every limb.

"What are those fearful tones?"

Then came a confused sound, as of many voices intoning the vespers.

One voice, which imitated the monotonous delivery of the celebrant, began to sing in Latin the words of a hymn--

"Bacchus, prepare the libation."

Another voice answered in the same tone--

"And hasten, brethren, to drink!"

Then a third took up the text in a parody of the _Gloria_--

"Gloria Baccho, et filiae ejus Cerevisiae et Spiritui vini, sicut erat in Baccho natus, et nunc, et semper, et per omnia pocula poculorum.

Stramen."

The countess felt her whole body turning into ice; fear mingled with horror. She understood the impious parody.

Now the organ accompanied the antiphon.

"Date n.o.bis de cerevisia vestra; quia sitiunt guttura nostra"--"Give us of your beer; our throats are dry."

Then followed the psalm--

"Brother to brother spoke these words: shall two goblets of beer quench man's thirst?"

"Two, three, five, six are not enough for man's satiety."

"Blessed be Bacchus, who gave us beer."

Then followed the Capitulum.

"Brethren, attend, and do as I command ye. Before ye leave the ale-house for your own homes empty all the pots, leave not a drop therein, but tilt them and drain every drop of wine. This do from goblet to goblet. Stramen."

The countess felt, as she listened to this profanity, what a d.a.m.ned soul must experience when for the first time it consorts with devils.

But now a h.e.l.lish chorus broke forth of men's and women's voices, yelling out a parody of a hymn--

"Bacchus, who gave us drink, Art thou not called the G.o.d of liquor?

Grant us all the holy grace, Strength to drink in every place, So that, drinking everywhere, We for glory may prepare In thy everlasting wine-cellar."

This was followed by the ringing of the bell, and the priest's voice intoned the blessing.

"Bacchus be with you."

The chorus answered, "And with thy pint-pots."

Then came the Oratio--

"Let us eat. O all-powerful Bacchus, since thou hast created this society of ours for thine own honor, grant to us its continuance, and give to us a constant supply of brave topers, who never may cease drinking from goblet to goblet."

And the chorus answered, "Stramen."

The countess was not able any longer to hold herself up. She sank upon her knees, and looked up at the priest in mute horror. Hardly knowing what she did, she gazed in utter despair at the tall figure lit up as it was by the rays of the moon, which played round his head like a halo.

The abbe put the key into the lock of the chapel door. The countess caught his hand; her fright amounted to agony.

"Do not--do not open it!" she cried. "Inside is h.e.l.l let loose."

With an elevation of his head, the abbe answered proudly--

"Nec portae inferi--the gates of h.e.l.l shall not prevail"; and then he turned the key, and the heavy iron door swung open, and disclosed the actors in the strange drama.

On the altar all the candles were lighted, and their light showed with distinctness every incident of the performance, every feature in the faces of the performers.

What a scene!

On one side of the vault ran a long table, round which was seated, eating and drinking, not the countess's ancestors and ancestresses, but all the servants of her household. The maids, who were so strictly guarded, were here in the company of the men who were so rigorously excluded. The countess could, therefore, see that these were flesh-and-blood ghosts which had so long haunted her ancient castle.

Each of her handmaidens had a lover in either the steward, bailiff, gamekeeper, or clerk in the neighborhood. The nervous housemaid, who at night was afraid of her own shadow, was now drinking out of the gla.s.s of the innkeeper; the virtuous maid was embraced by the mayor's footman; the portress, an elderly virgin, held a jug in her hand, while she executed a clog-dance upon the table. All the rest clapped hands, shrieked, sang at the top of their voices, and beat the table as if it were a big drum. The shepherd, who represented the countess's grandfather, sat upon the monument of the chancellor, his legs round the cross, and played the bagpipes. It was this instrument which at the burlesque of vespers imitated the harmonium. Upon the gravestone of the first archbishop the beer-barrel was set up. The maids were all dressed in the countess's silk dresses, with the exception of the female coachman, who, as usual, wore man's clothes, but by way of symmetry her lover, the coachman of the neighboring brewery, was dressed in woman's clothes. The countess recognized on the head of this bearded fellow her nightcap, and round his body her cloak, trimmed with her best lace. Worst of all, at the top of the table sat Fraulein Emerenzia, on very intimate terms with her neighbor, a young lawyer. She wore the skirt of a favorite dress of Theudelinde's, a flame-colored brocade; the body could not fit her corpulent form, so she had her mistress's best lace shawl wrapped round her. Her face was red; she had a large tumbler of wine before her, and she smoked a pipe. The modest Emerenzia!

The men were all drunk and noisy, the women screamed in an unearthly manner; the bagpipes squealed; the table resounded with thumps and the clatter of the portress's clogs. From the altar came the voice of the mock priest, his arms outstretched in blessing. Through the din the words "Bacchus vobisc.u.m" were heard, and the tinkle of the bell. This mock priest was no other than Michael the sacristan, who brought all the church ornaments confided to his care. He wore the pastor's vestments, and on his head an improvised skull-cap. The acolyte was the parish bell-ringer.

The countess was cut to the heart. The terrible ingrat.i.tude, especially of these girls, to whom she had been as a mother--more anxious indeed than their own mothers to keep them pure and innocent--wounded the poor lady who had taught them to sing hymns on Sunday, had fed them from her own table, and had never allowed them to read a novel or hear a bad word. And this was the outcome of her efforts. They insulted the graves of her ancestors, played upon her nervous fears, destroyed her rest, nearly drove her mad with their ghostly noises, wore her clothes at their orgies, and, worse insult of all, she, a high-born lady and a pure woman, had the degradation of wearing these same garments, defiled as they were with the smell of wine and stale tobacco.

Bitter as such ingrat.i.tude was, it counted as nothing in comparison with the profanation of using the holiest things of religion, the sacred ornaments of the Church, to carry out these impious rites. "Woe to them from whom scandal cometh," says the Scripture, and this woe means pain and suffering that no soothing balsam can alleviate.

A mortal terror still filled the countess's heart. She was in the presence of those who had no control over their already besotted senses. If these drunken savages, these uns.e.xed women, found their revels were discovered, what was to hinder them tearing her to pieces?

There was only one man between her and them. Theudelinde looked at her solitary protector. His eyes gleamed with such apostolic anger that her timid soul grew fearful of the consequences, both to him and to herself, of his just wrath. She seized both his hands, to hold him from venturing among such demons. The abbe easily freed himself from the clasp of her weak fingers. In one bound he sprang down the steps, fell upon the false priest as he was in the act of p.r.o.nouncing his final stramen; with the b.u.t.t-end of his rhinoceros whip he gave him two blows.

What the countess now witnessed was truly no vision. She saw how one man, armed with no more formidable weapon than a horsewhip, ventured into the midst of the h.e.l.lish a.s.sembly, with one hand seized the table and overturned it and all that was on it of dishes, gla.s.ses, and wine-cups, with the other cracked his whip in the faces of the guests, who sprang to their feet in all the terror of detection, like to the profaners of the Temple. They were driven towards the door of the vault, the abbe's whip descending on their shoulders with impartial justice. They went tumbling over one another, howling and screaming, pressing onwards and pursued by the flagellation of the abbe. The bagpipe player in his haste missed his footing, those behind stumbled over him, and so lay all in a heap together. Not one went without carrying a remembrance of the abbe's strong arm, for he spared no one.

No effort was made at reprisals; the criminal who is caught seldom shows fight. These last were, moreover, taken by surprise, and the clergyman was possessed of extraordinary strength; one man who tried to drag the horsewhip from his hand was dealt such a blow in his face that he was glad to relinquish his hold and take to his heels without loss of time.

"Give it to them! give it to them!" cried the countess, who had no pity for her former servants, who had to pa.s.s her as they made their way pell-mell to the door. Emerenzia covered her head, not from shame, but fearing her face might get a blow. Almost the last was the sacristan, whose clerical dress hindered his speed, and whose back was so battered by the abbe that the vestment he wore hung in ribbons.

After the last guest had departed, the abbe closed the heavy door of the vault and returned to where the countess was standing. His face wore an almost glorified expression; it was the consciousness of having a.s.serted his strength. As he approached the countess fell on her knees, and made as if she would kiss his feet, but the abbe raised her.

"Compose yourself, countess. Your present situation needs all your strength. Do you know that at this moment there are only two persons in this castle, for I have locked the door which leads to the court-yard. This folly is played out. You see now that no wicked spirit had any part in it. It was no ghost, only human beings who have had to do with this miserable business."

"What shall I do?" asked the countess, constraining herself to speak calmly.

"Take my lantern. I am going to lock the lattice door, so as to stop any entrance from this side. But you can return by the way we came, back to your own apartment, where I advise you to make yourself some tea; you are freezing with cold."

"Must I go back all that way alone?"

"Remember the words, 'If G.o.d is with me, who is against me,' and you can never be alone. To see ghosts is an illness; the method of curing it must be heroic."

And as he saw that the countess, in spite of her efforts, could not subdue her nervous tremor, he took her by the hand, and, returning with her to the library, led her to the gla.s.s case which enclosed the skeleton, and opened the door.