268 The Durrenstein. [Sepr. 
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 inyalid, 
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 disclo- 
sure 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 pro- 
bably can 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 neighbourhood, which I found in great confusion, in consequence of 
some strange appearances, on this 29th of September, which were fol- 
lowed by not less strange results upon a hunting party of nobles, who 
had treated the popular belief on the subject with a too ostentatious con- 
tempt. Insanity was, in some instances, the unquestionable results. 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 ven- 
geance taken on the scorners, and fuller than ever of the marvellous 
power of the Red Woman of Durrenstein. 
«« Hating superstition of all kinds, I was wise enough to attempt bring- 
ing 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 shew the absurdity of the whole story. 
« T have now been in the mountains a week ; the peasantry had gene- 
ral 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 Dur- 
renstein 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 wirth- 
haus ; 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 coloured 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 that I had promised to meet and hold at defiance. 
