262 Lhe Durrenstein. [Serr. 
our bustling and overwhelmed cook could give us on so brief a notice ; 
produced some capital claret, a travelling companion, whose society I 
had often found indispensable to console me for the désagrémens of all 
other ; and by the help of a large stowage of faggots on the hearth, and 
a bundle of wax tapers, which I fear had been consecrated at the shrine 
of “ Maria Tapferl,’”’ the most famous sanctuary of this part of Austria, 
but now, in defiance of piety and pilgrimage, lighted for our profane 
supper-table, I contrived to make up a party as much disposed to be 
happy as if they were sitting round the gold plate, and under the silver 
chandeliers of his Serenity the Prince Lichtenstein. 
The postilions had been perfectly in the right. The storm'came on 
in full force before we had sent round the -first bottle. Thunderclaps, 
bursts of rain, roarings of wind, and sheets of lightning, that made us 
all look blue, first followed each other with the rapidity of musket 
firing, then came all together, and at last, as they say of the compass in 
storms at sea, the land storm fairly stopped the rotation of the bottle. 
We left the feast upon the table, and crowded to the little casements 
to see the peformance of the angry elements on so suitable a stage. 
Nothing could be finer or fiercer. The grim features of the mountains, 
under the changes of the light and the vapours, took the hue and aspect 
of every thing marvellous, and would have made the fortune of a new 
Goéthe, or a new Retcsh. All the witcheries of the playmate hags of 
the Hartz, were peaceable and legitimate occupations to the furious 
fantasies that nature here disported before our wondering eyes. The 
hills seemed nervously alive: the torrents danced and sprang about in 
the most direct contradiction to the laws of gravity; the forest tossed, 
groaned, and flamed, as if the days of old necromancy were come again, 
and every tree contained its tortured spirit. All was fire, hail, water, 
and uproar. 
But the rock of Durrenstein, with its ruined fortress on its summit, a 
fitting crown for this monarch of the realm of ravines, still held its 
superiority over the less renowned victims of the storm. It stood in the 
centre of the conflict, and, alternately lost and seen as the sea of cloud 
rolled by, looked like some mighty ship of a hundred thousand tons, 
some huge leviathan of war, plunging and rising, battling’ with and 
‘baffling an ocean of mad billows. With the shifting of the clouds came 
perpetual changes, and every gazer had his favourite comparison. But 
at last all agreed in one; and every voice almost at the same moment 
cried out “the sorcerer.” The tempest had lulled for a moment, and 
suffered the vapours to gather in a heavy white fleece round the summit 
of the hill; below this rolling turban the rocks were bare, and broken 
into the most striking resemblance of the withered and darkened visage 
that, from time immemorial, we attribute to the dealers in forbidden 
arts. While we looked, the costume was completed by a gush of waters 
which had forced its way through a hollow of the rock, and covered the 
magician’s chin and front with a most venerable and sweeping beard of 
foam a hundred and fifty feet long. 
_ The sight was curious enough to be worth some record. I had 
seated myself at the table, and taken out my crayon to sketch the out- 
line, when a general cry from the window brought me back. I saw, tomy 
astonishment, standing in the orifice, which we had established as the 
sorcerer’s mouth, a figure which visibly moved—but whether man, bear, 
or fiend, none couldascertain. It lingered for awhile on this tremendous 
. 
