"Thou com'st, and with transport I feel my breast swell: Full long have I suffered the torments of hell, And now shall its pleasures be mine! See, see, how the fiends are athirst for thy blood! Twelve years has my panting heart furnished their food. Come, wretch, let them feast upon thine!" She said, and the demons their prey flocked around; They dashed him, with horrible yell, on the ground, And blood down his limbs trickled fast; His eyes from their sockets with fury they tore; They fed on his entrails, all reeking with gore, And his heart was Ulrilda's repast. But now the grey cock told the coming of day! The fiends with their victim straight vanished away, And Carloman's heart throbbed again; With terror recalling the deeds of the night, He rose, and from Falkenstein speeding his flight, Soon reached his paternal domain. Since then, all with horror the ruins behold; No shepherd, though strayed be a lamb from his fold, No mother, though lost be her child, The fugitive dares in these chambers to seek, Where fiends nightly revel, and guilty ghosts shriek In accents most fearful and wild! Oh! shun them, ye pilgrims! though late be the hour, Though loud howl the tempest, and fast fall the shower; From Falkenstein Castle begone! There still their sad banquet hell's denizens share; There Osric the Lion still raves in despair: Breathe a prayer for his soul, and pass on! The Conference of the Dead A legend of later date than most of the Rhineland tales, but still of sufficient interest to merit inclusion among these, is that which attaches to the palace of Biberich. Biberich lies on the right bank of the river, not very far from Mainz, and its palace was built at the beginning of the eighteenth century by George Augustus, Duke of Nassau. The legend states that not long after the erection of the palace a Duchess of Nassau died there, and lay in state as befitted her rank in a room hung with black velvet and lighted with the glimmer of many tapers. Outside in the great hall a captain and forty-nine men of the Duke's bodyguard kept watch over the chamber of death. It was midnight. The captain of the guard, weary with his vigil, had gone to the door of the palace for a breath of air. Just as the last stroke of the hour died away he beheld the approach of a chariot, drawn by six magnificent coal-black horses, which, to his amazement, drew up before the palace. A lady, veiled and clad in white, alighted and made as though she would enter the building. But the captain barred the way and challenged the bold intruder. "Who are you," he said sternly, "who seek to enter the palace at this hour? My orders are to let none pass." "I was first lady of the bedchamber to our late Duchess," replied the lady in cold, imperious tones; "therefore I demand the right of entrance."