CHAPTER II.
Maitre Bernard Hertzog had slept a couple of hours, and the boiling of
the water in the millrace alone competed with the noise of his loud
snoring, when suddenly a guttural voice, arising in the midst of the deep
silence, cried--
"Droeckteufel! Droeckteufel! have you forgotten everything?"
The voice was so piercing that Maitre Bernard, waking with a sudden
start, felt his hair creeping with horror. He raised himself upon his
elbow and listened again with eyes starting with astonishment. The hut
was as dark as a cellar; he listened, but not a breath, not a sound,
came; only far away, far beyond the ruins, a dull, distant roar was heard
among the mountains.
Bernard, with neck outstretched, heaved a deep sigh; in a minute he began
to stammer out--
"Who is there? What do you want?"
But no answer came.
"It was a dream," he said, falling back upon his heather couch. "I must
have been lying upon my back. There is nothing at all in dreams and
nightmares--nothing! nothing!"
But in the midst of the restored silence the same doleful cry was again
repeated--
"Droeckteufel! Droeckteufel!"
And as Maitre Bernard, fairly beside himself, was preparing for instant
flight, but with his face to the wall, and unable to move from his couch,
the voice, in a dissonant chant, with pauses and strange accents, went
on--
"The Queen Faileube, espoused to our king, Chilperic--Queen Faileube,
learning that Septimanie, the governess of the young princes, had
conspired against the king's life--Queen Faileube said to the lord, 'My
lord, the viper waits until you are asleep to give you a mortal wound.
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