I descended in turn the first steps of the staircase, guiding my course by the distant glimmer, when it suddenly disappeared. The old woman and the Count had reached the bottom of the precipice. Soon the steps ceased. I looked around me and discovered on my left hand a ray of moonlight that found its way into the pit through a low door, across the nettles and brambles laden with h.o.a.r-frost. I put aside these bushes, clearing away the snow with my feet, and found myself at the foot of Hugh's donjon-tower. Who would have supposed that such a hole led up to the Castle? Who had shown it to the old woman? I did not stop to answer these questions. The vast plain lay before me, flooded with a light almost equal to that of day. To the right stretched the dark extent of the Black Forest, with its perpendicular rocks, its gorges and ravines. The night air was still and bitter cold; I felt exalted by the keen atmosphere. My first glance was to discover the direction which the old woman and the Count had taken. Their tall, dark forms were moving slowly up the mountain side some two hundred paces in advance of me, and stood out against the background of the heavens studded with innumerable stars. I came close up to them at the bottom of the next ravine. The Count moved slowly on, the winding-sheet still dragging behind him. His att.i.tude and movements, like those of his companion, were automatic in their precision.

On they went, some twenty paces before me, following the hollow road to the Altenberg, now in the shadow, now in the full light, for the moon was shining with surprising brilliancy. A few clouds followed her, and seemed as if stretching out their great arms to seize her; but she evaded them, and her rays, cold as a blade of steel, cut me to the heart.

I would gladly have turned back, but an invisible power impelled me to follow this funeral procession. Even to this hour, I still see in fancy the path that winds beneath the colonnades of the Black Forest. I hear the snow crunching beneath my step, and the fallen leaves rustling in the gently stirring north wind. I still see myself following those two silent figures, and I try in vain to explain to myself the mysterious impulse which caused me to dog their footsteps.

At last we reached the forest and proceeded amongst the naked beeches, the dark shadows of whose higher boughs intersected the lower branches and traced their outlines on the snow-covered path. Sometimes I fancied I heard some one behind me; I would turn quickly around, but could see nothing.

We gained at length the line of crags on the summit of the Altenberg, behind which the torrent of the Schneeberg rushes earlier in the year, but now there was only a mere thread of water slowly trickling beneath its thick covering of ice. The vast solitude no longer had its murmurs, its warblings, and its thunder; its oppressive stillness inspired fear.

The Count and the old woman found a gap in the rocks, up which they mounted quickly and apparently without effort, while I was obliged to scramble up, clinging to the bushes in order to follow them.

Scarcely had I reached the top of the rock which forms a corner of the precipice, when I found myself within three yards of them, and before me I saw a bottomless abyss. On the left hung the falls of the Schneeberg in sheets of ice. This resemblance to a wave leaping into the precipice, and bearing with it the neighboring trees, sucking up the underbrush and cleaving the ivys that follow on its crest without becoming uprooted; this appearance of mighty movement in the immovableness of death, and those two silent forms proceeding with their sinister work, all inspired me with indescribable terror. Nature herself seemed to share in my feelings.

The Count had laid down his burden; the old woman and he swung it for a moment above the precipice, then the long shroud floated over the edge, and the actors in this awful drama bent over to watch it as it fell.

The long, white sheet, swelling upwards as it met the rising breath of the chasm, and then falling slowly and disappearing from sight, still floats before my eyes. I see it sinking like the swan shot far up in the sky, her wings spread out and head thrown back, falling to earth in the agony of death.

At this moment a cloud which had long been approaching the moon slowly veiled her in its bluish folds; complete darkness succeeded. After a little the moon appeared again through a rift in the clouds, and I saw the old woman seize the Count's hand and drag him along with dangerous speed down the mountain side. Then it became dark again, and I dared not risk a step lest I should fall headlong into an abyss. Once more the clouds parted. I looked about me and found myself alone on the high rock, knee-deep in snow. Seized with horror, I made my way cautiously down the steep declivity, and once on the plain I started to run towards the Castle, as much stunned as if I had shared in some dark crime.

As for the Lord of Nideck and the old woman, I had lost sight of them.

CHAPTER X.

I LOSE MY WAY AND Pa.s.s THE NIGHT IN THE DWARF'S LODGE.

I wandered around the Castle, unable to find the opening through which I had come out on to the plain. So much anxiety and emotion began to tell upon my mind; I moved aimlessly along, asking myself with dread if madness were not playing a part in my fancies, unable to believe what I had seen, and yet alarmed at the clearness of my perceptions. The image of the master of Nideck waving his torch in the darkness, howling like a wolf, coolly accomplishing an imaginary crime, without omitting a gesture, a circ.u.mstance, not even the smallest detail, then escaping and committing to the abyss the secret of the murder, hara.s.sed my mind and hung over me like a nightmare. I ran breathless and distracted through the snow, not knowing in what direction to guide my steps.

As day approached, the cold became more intense. At last, exhausted, my legs feeling like lead, and my ears half frozen, I succeeded in discovering the iron grating, and I rang the bell with all my might. It was then about four o'clock in the morning. Knapwurst kept me waiting a terribly long time. His little lodge, built against the rock, just within the princ.i.p.al gate, remained quite silent; it seemed to me that the dwarf would never finish dressing, for I had fancied him in bed and soundly sleeping.

I rang again, and this time his grotesque figure emerged abruptly from his doorway, and he cried furiously:

"Who's there?"

"I! The Doctor!"

"Ah! that is another matter! I'll see whether you are telling the truth."

He went back into his lodge to get a lantern, crossed the outer court with the snow up to his middle, and staring at me through the grating:

"I beg your pardon, monsieur the doctor," he said; "I thought you were asleep up-stairs in Hugh's Tower. It was you ringing! Now I see why Sperver came to me at midnight to ask if any one had gone out. I said no, for I never saw you go out."

"But for Heaven's sake, Knapwurst, open the door! You can tell me all this later."

"Be patient for a moment, monsieur."

And the dwarf deliberately turned the lock and drew back the bolts, while I stood with my teeth chattering, and shivering from head to foot.

"You are cold, Doctor," observed the diminutive porter, "and you cannot get into the Castle. Sperver has fastened the inside door, I don't know why; he doesn't ordinarily; the grating is enough. Come into the lodge and warm yourself. You won't find my room much to boast of; properly speaking, it is nothing but a sty, but when you are cold you don't spend much time in looking about."

Without replying to his chatter I followed him as rapidly as possible, burning with impatience to learn what things were pa.s.sing in the Castle, but seeing nothing for it but to wait till dawn.

We entered the lodge, and in spite of my state of complete frigidity, I could not help admiring the picturesque disorder of this species of nest. The slate roof leaned against the rock on one side, and on the other against a wall six to seven feet high, disclosing to view the blackened beams propped up against each other. The lodge consisted of a single room, furnished with a bed which the gnome did not take the trouble to make up very often, and two small dusty windows with hexagonal panes which the moon turned to mother-of-pearl with its pale rays. A large, square table occupied the middle of the room. How this ma.s.sive oak table had ever been brought through the narrow doorway, it would have been difficult to explain. Upon a few shelves were arranged some old volumes and rolls of parchment, and on the table lay open an enormous tome with illuminated initial letters, bound in vellum, with a silver clasp and corners; it looked to me like a collection of old chronicles. Lastly, two armchairs, one covered with red leather and the other upholstered with a down cushion, and bearing the unmistakable impression of the dwarf's body, completed the furniture of the place.

I will not stop to describe the desk with its five or six pens, the tobacco jar, the pipes scattered variously about, the little, low, iron stove in one corner of the room, with its door standing open, red hot, and sending a shower of sparks from time to time on to the stone floor, and the spitting cat with her back arched and her paw lifted in defiance of me.

All these objects were veiled in that smoky amber light which rests the eye, and of which the old Flemish masters alone possessed the secret.

"So you went out last night, monsieur the doctor," Knapwurst said to me when we were comfortably seated, he before his volume and I with my hands stretched out before the fire.

"Yes, rather early. A woodcutter of the Black Forest needed my services; he had cut his left foot with an axe stroke."

This explanation appeared to satisfy the dwarf; he lighted his black pipe, which hung down over his chin.

"You don't smoke, monsieur?"

"Indeed I do!"

"Well, help yourself to a pipe! I was just here," he said, stretching his long, yellow hand over the page, "reading the chronicles of Hertzog when you rang."

I now understood why he had kept me standing so long in the cold.

"You waited to finish your chapter," I said smiling.

"Yes, monsieur," he admitted; and we laughed together.

"However, if I had known it was you, I should have put it off till another time," he added.

A silence of some minutes followed, during which I studied the truly remarkable physiognomy of the dwarf: those deep wrinkles at the corners of his mouth, those little squinting eyes, the broad, unshapely nose rounded at the end, and especially his swelling, double-storied forehead. I noticed in his face something of the expression of Socrates, and as I warmed myself before the crackling blaze, I reflected upon the strange fortunes of certain of us.

"Here is this dwarf," I said to myself, "this unsightly, stunted creature, exiled into a corner of Nideck like the cricket that sings beneath the hearthstone; this Knapwurst, who, in the midst of all these excitements, hunting-parties and gay cavalcades going and coming, the baying of hounds, stamping of horses, and winding of the hunters' horn, lives quietly alone, buried in his books, and thinking only of times long past, indifferent whether all is in songs or tears around him, whether it is spring, summer, or autumn that comes to peep in at him through his little dusty window panes, reanimating, warming or chilling the breast of Nature outside. While others are living, blessed with the hope and magic of love, striving to gratify ambition or avarice, plotting, coveting, and longing, he hopes for nothing, covets nothing, wishes nothing. He sits and smokes his pipe, and with his eyes fixed on the old parchment before him, he dreams and revels in things that no longer exist, perhaps never had any existence--what matters it to him--'Hertzog says this,' 'such a one has it differently,'--and he is happy. His parchment skin gets more and more wrinkled, his sharp elbows dig holes in the table, while his long fingers bury themselves in his cheeks, and his little gray eyes roam over Latin, Greek, and Etruscan characters. He goes into ecstasies, he licks his lips like a cat who has just lapped up a saucer of cream, and then he lies down on his cot, with his knees drawn up under the coverlid, and thinks he has pa.s.sed the best possible kind of a day. O G.o.d of Heaven! Is it at the top or at the bottom of the ladder that we find the true application of your laws, and the accomplishment of the duties you have imposed?"

Meanwhile the snow was melting from my legs, and the grateful warmth of the stove restored my spirits. I felt reanimated in this atmosphere of tobacco smoke and resinous pine. Knapwurst laid his pipe on the table, and pa.s.sing his hand once more across the folio:

"Monsieur de la Roche," he said in a grave tone that seemed to come from the bottom of his conscience, or if you prefer, from the depths of a twenty-five gallon cask, "here is the law and the prophets."

"How do you mean, Knapwurst?"

"Parchment, old parchment, is what I love. These old yellow leaves, eaten by worms, are all that is left us of times long gone by, from Charlemagne to our own day. The ancient families have disappeared, but the old parchments remain. Where would be the glory of the Hohenstauferns, the Liningens, the Nidecks, and so many other n.o.ble families, were it not for these? Where would be the fame of their t.i.tle-rights, their deeds of arms, their heroic actions, their distant expeditions to the Holy Land, their ancient alliances and claims, and their conquests, did they not stand in these chronicles? These lofty barons, dukes, and princes would be as if they never existed--they and everything relating to them far and near.

"Their great castles, fortunes, and palaces crumble and fall, and their ruins serve as vague reminders. Of all this a single memorial remains,--the chronicles, the history, the songs of bards and minnesingers,--parchment alone is left to us!"

A brief silence followed, then Knapwurst resumed:

"And in those distant times, when brave knights went forth to war, disputing and fighting over a bit of forest, t.i.tle, or a lesser matter yet, with what contempt did they look upon this wretched little scribe, this man of letters and mystery, clad in ratteen, his only weapon an ink bottle dangling at his belt, and the handle of his pen for a plume. How often they jeered him, crying, 'That fellow is an atom, a flea; he is good for nothing; he cannot even collect our taxes or manage our estates, while we fine chaps go out on our mounts with lance in hand, ready for anything that comes in our way!' Thus they talked when they saw the poor devil dragging along behind them, shivering in winter, sweating in summer, and growing feeble in his old age. Ah, well! this atom, this flea, has caused them to survive long after their castles have turned to dust and their arms have rusted away, and for my part I love these old parchments; I respect and revere them. Like ivy, they clothe the ruins and prevent the old walls from crumbling away and becoming entirely effaced."

Having given such expression to his thoughts, Knapwurst seemed grave, and reflecting upon these things his eyes filled with the tears of affectionate remembrance. The dwarf loved those who had tolerated and protected his ancestors. After all, he spoke the truth; there was profound good sense in his words. His warmth surprised me.