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flash of the exhausted and thinning cloud, darkness had resumed her "leaden sceptre o'er the drowsy world." The storm had been fairly tired out, and the grim coronal of Durrenstein was distinguishable only by the phosphoric glimmer of the torrent still tumbling down the front of the mountain.

I was suddenly recalled from my view by a general exclamation. Across the ceiling, which had hitherto looked as black as its pitch-pine rafters could have made it, the procession of knights and dames was again glittering, and in the rear of the procession moved a shape that we all with one voice pronounced to be the Red Woman of Durrenstein herself, or something worse, if our gallantry would allow us to conceive it invested in the female garb. The shape was covered from head to foot with a cloak of the most powerfully sanguine color; but under the hood looked out a face, which, whether it was fact, or the heated fancy of gentlemen loving their wine "not wisely but to well," contained all the ingredients of hazard to hearts and heads. It was excessively lovely, but with a pair of wild, and deep eyes, that gleamed like the very seats of unhappy mystery. She came glittering in prismatic beauty from the darkness, like the kings and magicians of Rembrandt, and grew upon us until the eye absolutely shrunk from her concentrated lustre.

The German "exclaimed, that "Frauenhoffer himself would be puzzled to make such a magic lantern: he would lay ten to one on the point with any man."

The Italian said, that he "had seen nothing so bright since the last eruption of Vesuvius, nor so beautiful since the last illumination of St. Peters."

The Frenchman was unnationally silent, and sat, with his eyes alternately turned on the vision and the stranger, who had leaned his head on the table, and who, but for a broken word now and then, I should have supposed to be asleep, in quiet contempt of our phantom.

But be it what it might, I found that it had made us all grave, and I proposed calling in the landlord, if he should be still out of bed, to tell us what he knew of the matter. The little hall was dark as the night itself, and while I was feeling my way, awkwardly enough, along the walls, my foot struck against a heavy human incumbrance towards the end of the passage, which a groan and a few exclamations of alarm told me was the valorous Herr Michael. I raised him up, and convincing him, with some difficulty, that I was not among the spectral visitors of his sins of innkeeping, I rather carried than led him in to our festal room, which, however, had now become as silent as any sepulchre in the Abbey of Molk. The Herr was a most reluctant witness, and nothing but the most persevering cross examination could extort an idea from his intense solidity of skull.

He was evidently afraid of the disastrous reputation of keeping a ghostly house, which would have prohibited for ever the sale of the very considerable quantity of damaged Bavarian beer, that, mixed with Vienna brandy, made his staple. Not a peasant would have been guilty of the immorality of getting drunk under the roof of a landlord who had dealings with ghosts; and the result to the Herr Michael would, as he pathetically observed, "be worse than purgatory, inasmuch as masses, though they may take a man out of future fire, were never yet able to take him out of jail.” At length he acknowledged that sights of the kind which had perplexed us, had made his life miserable every year since he had taken this "gasthaus;" that an anniversary storm, enough to tear the skies down, had attended certain sounds and appearances, of which he dreaded to speak, and of which, indeed, he knew "little more than that they generally made him incapable of examining at the time, or wishing to examine them at any time after, as long as he lived."

The spectre upon the ceiling had vanished into a faint gleam that bare

ly showed the outline. But no persuasion could induce the shuddering landlord to presume so much as to survey even this diminished majesty of terror. He stood leaning his huge bulk on his hands, his hands on the table, and his eyes invincibly shut. Farther inquiry was useless with a boor half dead with fright; and we unanimously voted his his dismissal, which he accepted with great gratitude, imploring, in the humblest terms, that the subject of the night "should never be mentioned, as it could be mentioned only to his undoing."

As he was blindly turning away, piloting himself by his hands, he rather abruptly touched the stranger, who started on his feet with an angry interjection, and gazed round for the offender. But whatever might be his surprise, it could not have been superior to ours. Never did I see such a change in the human countenance in so short a period. Ten minutes before, when he laid his head on the table, he was one of the handsomest men that I had seen in Germany; in the vigor of life, with a peculiarly bright eye, a high-colored cheek, every feature full of health; the whole physiognomy like that of a gallant and animated soldier, bronzed by campaigning. Yet, but for his sitting in the same seat, I could not possibly have known the man who now sent

his ghastly glare upon us. His fine Italian eyes were hollow and dim; his color was leaden; his cheek hollow and wrinkled; and when, in answer to the general inquiry, "whether he was ill ?" which might have naturally occurred from his drenching in the torrent, he attempted to make some acknowledgment, the tremor and almost idiotic difficulty of his utterance were painful to the ear. Fifty years had passed over him in these fifteen minutes.

He tried to laugh off his embarrassment; but it would not do. His laugh was even more painful than his speech; and, after an effort equally violent and abortive to recover his ground, he sank back on his seat, and

burst into tears. We now altogether decided on what must have been the cause of his illness, and entreated him to go to rest, or at least lie down on our cloaks before the fire. But he resisted our nursing with almost passionate obstinacy, contended that he never was better in his life, sang a popular chanson to prove his undiminished gaiety, and, after this display, in a voice quivering and dissonant with weakness, he began to tell his stories of the court with laborious vivacity. But the charm was at an end; and though I, as the entertainer, kept my seat, my guests gave palpable symptoms of a wish to consult their pillows.

But the German, who led the way in those natural though ungracious signs of weariness, which have cut short the periods of many an orator, had scarcely accomplished his profoundest yawn, when our invalid, starting from his chair, begged that he might be permitted to caution "that gentleman, or any of us, who should be imprudent enough to think of sleeping before day, against the hazards of that night of all nights in the year.''

Here was something for our curiosity, and we waited for the disclosure with undissembled impatience.

"You saw me, Sir, I believe,” addressing himself to me, as the host, "under rather singular circumstances this evening, of which you can probably give a much better account than I can, for the whole passed before me rather like a dream than any thing else. I am in the military service of the King of Bavaria; and, during the summer furlough of my regiment, of which I am colonel, finding the heat of the lower country oppressive, I have been a great deal in the habit of shooting among the mountains. Last year, a little later in the season, I happened to be in this neighborhood, which I found in great confusion, in consequence of some strange appearances, on this 29th of September, which were followed by not less strange results upon a hunting party of nobles, who had treated the popu

lar belief on the subject with a too ostentatious contempt. Insanity was, in some instances, the unquestionable result. In others, a succession of eccentric notions of having lost valuable property, of having seen extraordinary displays of juggling, of having drank some medicated liquors, which long bewildered them-and so forth. In short, the peasantry were, as usual, full of histories of the preternatural vengeance taken on the scorners, and fuller than ever of the marvellous power of the Red Woman of Durrenstein.

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Hating superstition of all kinds, I was wise enough to attempt bringing the peasantry to reason; but as argument was soon hopeless, I pledged myself to be upon the spot of enchantment, the very centre of the witch's kingdom, on the next 29th day of September, and there in person to show the absurdity of the whole story.

"I have now been in the mountains a week; the peasantry had general notice of my determination to outface the Lady of the Rock. Many an entreaty was made to me to relinquish the unhallowed hazard, and many a prayer followed me, when, in the sight of the population of a dozen villages, I set out this morning. The true time to reach the Durrenstein is midnight; but the storm drove me out of my covert to find shelter where best I could. Turning the base of the hill, I saw this wirthhaus; but the difficulties between rendered all hope of reaching it totally idle. I sat down under a projection of the rock, to linger until the storm should be past. While I was amusing the time by sketching the veins in a remarkably fine slab of colored marble, out of the solid rock moved a figure. I know how severe a tax this must lay on belief; but I can only tell what I saw. There stood before me, as clearly and fully defined-in fact, as substantial as the figure of any gentleman round this table-that personage which, whether from heaven above, or from earth below, was the one

17 ATHENEUM, VOL. 1, 3d series.

that I had promised to meet and hold at defiance. How I felt at the moment, I have no power to explain. I hope that, on all suitable occasions, I should not want nerve; but the sensation was less like any thing that I could call alarm, than a feeling of complete helplessness. In the perfect posses

sion of my senses and my understanding, I yet found that the physical powers were extinguished-perfectly paralyzed; as if flesh and blood were not made to abide the presence of such a being. I sat gazing on her as she advanced.

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ken, nor moved a muscle, for the crown of Austria. Her words were brief, and in a tone of singular mildness, yet which penetrated me like a cold weapon. She reproved me the haughty presumption which had doubted of her power, and declared, as a sign of her displeasure, that, when next I saw her, I should know that she was come for vengeance.'

"She vanished even while my eyes were fixed on her-the solid wall of rock received her, and she was gone. What was scarcely less surprising to me, was the sudden recovery of my limbs. Their past feebleness seemed to be made up for by supernatural strength at all events, whether in the strength of frenzy or terror, I darted from the cavern, sprang the precipice, and swam the torrent-to any one of which no bribe of earth could have tempted me half an hour before. I here found the hospitality to which I acknowledge myself so deeply indebted; and I began to hope that the vision had been merely one of those fantasies that play on the mind, exhausted by the considerable fatigue that I had undergone since morning, and shaping the absurdities of superstition into reality.

"But the glare upon the wall of this chamber, seconded by a certain indescribable sensation as if danger were near-such a sensation as a blind man may experience who knows that he is treading on the edge of a gulph, without knowing on which side of him it lies-told me that the time of the

visitation was come. The figure that passed over the ceiling decided the question. It was, in every feature, the one that I had seen come forth from the solid block of marble, which opened and closed, as if it had been a curtain shaken by the wind.”He paused, and his wandering eye seemed involuntarily searching for the phenomenon. Then, with an effort to

smile, he resumed :

"If I have exhibited any perturbation, I trust that it was not unmanly, nor beyond the natural embarrassment of finding one's-self in so peculiar a position. You will forgive me, I know, for my talking no more on this painful subject. I perhaps have already said more than I ought, when the very presence of this extraordinary being may be visible the next moment."

His voice sank, and he sat in an attitude of the deepest dejection; his countenance grew yet more depressed than when it first shocked us, and I insisted on his trying to rest. We actually feared for the life of this interesting and unfortunate man, whether the victim of his own heated fancy, of fever, or of fact, still alike unfortunate and in danger.

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As I assisted him to the door, he turned, and said, almost in a tone of despair, If you should find me by to-morrow, gentlemen, under the circumstances to which I have alluded, deprived of my faculties, or even beyond all the sufferings that can depress the human heart, do me the justice to believe that I deeply thank you for your forbearance with my strange malady; and do me the farther justice to believe that I fell a victim to a desire of doing public service. To you, Sir," said he to me, "I leave the painful but friendly task of acquainting my relatives in Bavaria with the event, though I wish that as few particulars of this unhappy night may be given as possible. Would that I had died as a soldier, in the service of my good and gallant king, and of my loved and honored coun

try!"

We all listened with profound deference, and promised.

At the door, a sudden thought flashed across him, and he stopped again." Gentlemen," said he, "there is one thing that, in my confusion, I had forgot. I heard among the peasantry, that the only hope of escaping the wrath of this fatal being was remaining sleepless, at least until day-break. I leave you now only because I feel myself unfit for society : but I shall try to resist sleep, unless that too be a part of the infliction. May I make it a solemn request, perhaps a dying one, that you will remain together till morning, or, if you should go to your chambers, that you will not suffer yourselves to be overtaken by sleep."

He waved his hand with a graceful and sad farewell, and, led by me,tottered to the lowly recess, which was all the receptacle that the wirthhaus afforded on occasions of superfluous tenantry. Grave discussion of the whole story was occupying my guests when I returned. In the spirit of master of the board, I proposed a round of toasts to the better health of the Bavarian : the proposal was honored, but we were not the merrier. At last the German, with a yawn deep as the North Sea, declared that he must go to bed, though fifty witches were waiting to carry him on their broomsticks over every hill in the empire. I combated the motion; but sleep was in my eyes, contradicting my eloquence; and my resistance only inspirited the Italian to let out a little of his secret soul, and scorn alike the wonders of earth, air, and friars. The Frenchman was asleep during the last half-hour, but, on being roused by the bitter sneer of the Italian, declared that the witch had very handsome eyes, the better in his estimation for being un peu malins; and that a visit would be quite an adventure after his own heart. The hint of danger, in fact, made it an obligation on us to take our chance. The question was put and carried by a general yawn; our last laugh was given to the non

sense of being kept out of our beds by the whims of an unlucky Bavarian, shaking in mind and body with the ague; the simple sight of our beds was a resistless spell; and, to judge by the universal snore that echoed from cell to cell in the first five minutes, my whole company were of the most ghost-defying description. But the snore began to sound more distant in my ears. I was anxious to keep awake, if for no other reason than to assist the invalid during the night. But nature said otherwise. I tossed and turned-walked about my chamber-broke my shins against bedposts, chairs, and the crazy table-sat down to think what I should do next to rub the poppies from my sensorium --and, in the act of discovering an infallible contrivance for keeping awake for ever, dropped back on my pillow, and was, as the bards of the almanacks say, instantly lulled in the feathery arms of Morpheus.

My sleep was, like that of every man who finishes his day in the jovial style of mine, crowded with dreams, and every dream was, of course, a new version of the tale of the day. The Red Woman was flying about me, over me, with me, frowning, howling, fixing her flame-colored fangs in my throat, and drying up my circulation with her intense eyes. At last the struggle broke my sleep. The Red Woman herself was standing before me I never remember to have been so thoroughly overpowered-I could not breathe.-My pulses were dead; my limbs were stiffened into stone.

The sight had paralyzed me as it had the unfortunate colonel. The phantom stalked slowly through the chamber. I saw her lay her hand on the table, which returned a pale gleam. She approached the pillow, and leaned over me. I was looking full at her. She started back; waved her hand in solemn adjuration; and with a low and ominous moan walked through the stone wall.

Whether I continued awake after this, or fell into a doze, I cannot tell to this day. But I still could not

have stirred, from the singular dizziness of my brain, and the feebleness of my limbs. At length a confused sound, and a broad burst of light completely roused me. I thought that the catastrophe was come, whether it was to be insanity or extinction; and bracing up my lost fortitude, determined, if I must perish, to leave behind no ground for suspicion that I had perished like a craven. On throwing open my shutters, I was rejoiced to find that the glare was from the sun, then not far from his "meridian tour." The sounds were still to be accounted for, and they grew more unaccountable every instant, a chaos of exclamations, rage, imprecations, and laughter. I heard tables rolled about, chairs dashed against the wall, the old windows crashing in all quarters. I was beginning to doubt whether the witch's vengeance had not already fallen on the sleepers, or whether the frenzy was my own. I at length opened my door-the passage was full of broken furniture, in the midst of which stood the Italian in violent fits of laughter. The German was forcing his heavy frame across a bar that held one-half of his door fast, the other half he had contrived to tear down. The Frenchman was still barred in his dungeon, which he was belaboring on all sides with a poker; and venting his fury in screams, roars, and imprecations, on the hand that had thus encroached on his natural liberty.

The Italian's laughter was contagious, and I joined him by the strength of sympathy, to the increased displeasure, as I was sorry to see, of the honest German, who grumbled something about " a couple of fools." But as I appeared to pay more attention to the remark than under the circumstances it perhaps deserved, my bulky friend recovered his temper, and with the face of a Diogenes, in jest, asked me "What o'clock it was?" I felt for my repeater. It was gone.-" I must have left it in my chamber.”—It was not there. My repeater was not the only absentee.-My purse, my pistols,

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