Thereupon the elephant poked his proboscis into the water, and muttered a fervent prayer. By so doing he set the water in agitation, so that the reflection of the moon was all of a quiver. "Look!" exclaimed the hare; "his Majesty is trembling with rage at you!" "Why is his supreme Excellency enraged with me?" asked the elephant. "Because you have set the water in motion. Worship him, and then be off!" The elephant let his ears droop, bowed his great head to the earth, and after having expressed in suitable terms his regret for having annoyed the Moon, and the hare dwelling in it, he vowed never to trouble the Moon-lake again. Then he departed, and the hares have ever since lived there unmolested. FOOTNOTES: [30] Tobler, Appenz. Sprachsbuch, 20. [31] Wolf, Zeitschrift für Deut. Myth. i. 168. [32] Fischart, Garg. 130. [33] Prætorius, i. 447. [34] Hebel, in his charming poem on the Man in the Moon, in "Allemanische Gedichte," makes him both thief and Sabbath-breaker. [35] "Mémoires ... par Hjouen Thsang, traduits du Chinois par Stanislas Julien," i. 375. Upham, "Sacred Books of Ceylon," iii. 309. The Mountain of Venus. Ragged, bald, and desolate, as though a curse rested upon it, rises the Hörselberg out of the rich and populous land between Eisenach and Gotha, looking, from a distance, like a huge stone sarcophagus--a sarcophagus in which rests in magical slumber, till the end of all things, a mysterious world of wonders. High up on the north-west flank of the mountain, in a precipitous wall of rock, opens a cavern, called the Hörselloch, from the depths of which issues a muffled roar of water, as though a subterraneous stream were rushing over rapidly-whirling millwheels. "When I have stood alone on the ridge of the mountain," says Bechstein, "after having sought the chasm in vain, I have heard a mighty rush, like that of falling water, beneath my feet, and after scrambling down the scarp, have found myself--how, I never knew--in front of the cave." ("Sagenschatz des Thüringes-landes," 1835.) In ancient days, according to the Thüringian Chronicles, bitter cries and long-drawn moans were heard issuing from this cavern; and at night, wild shrieks and the burst of diabolical laughter would ring from it over the vale, and fill the inhabitants with terror. It was supposed that this hole gave admittance to Purgatory; and the popular but faulty derivation of Hörsel was _Höre, die Seele_--Hark, the Souls!