On another occasion a shepherd--others say a miner--met on the Kyffhäuser a monk with a white beard, who unceremoniously and just as if he had asked him to come and see his next door neighbor, told him to come with him and see the Emperor Barbarossa, who wanted to speak to him. At first the poor shepherd was dumb-founded; then he began to tremble in all his limbs. The monk, however, reassured him and led him into a narrow, dark valley, and then, striking the ground three times with his rod, he said: “Open! open! open!” Thereupon a great noise arose beneath the feet of the monk and the shepherd; the earth seemed to quake and then a large opening became visible. They found they were in a long gallery, lighted up {384}by a single lamp and closed at the other end by folding doors of brass. The monk, who no doubt was a magician, knocked three times at the door with his rod, saying again: “Open! open! open!” and the brass doors turned upon their hinges, producing the same noise which they had heard before underground. They were now in a grotto, whose ceiling and walls, blackened by the smoke of an immense number of torches, seemed to be hung with black as a sign of mourning. It might have been taken for a mortuary chapel, only there was no coffin or catafalque visible. The shepherd had, in the mean time, begun to tremble once more, but the monk repeated his summons before a silver door, which thereupon opened in the same manner as the brass door. In a magnificent room lighted but dimly and in such a manner that it was impossible to tell where the light came from, they saw the Emperor Frederick, seated upon a golden throne, with a golden crown on his head; as they entered he gently inclined his head, contracting his bushy eyebrows. His long red beard had grown through the table before him and fell down to the ground. Turning, not without visible effort, towards the shepherd, he spoke to him for some time on different subjects and recommended to him to repeat {385}what he heard to his friends at home. His voice was feeble, but it grew strong and sonorous as soon as he alluded to the glory of Germany. Then he said:-- “Are the ravens still flying over the mountains?” “Yes!” replied the shepherd. “Are the dead trees still hanging over the abysses of the Kyffhâuser as in former days?” “Who could uproot them, unless it be a great storm?” “Has no one spoken to you of the reappearance of the old woman?” “No!” “Well then, I must sleep another hundred years!” He made a sign to the shepherd that he could go, and then fell asleep, murmuring the name of a woman which died on his lips. For among these great Sleepers of Germany there is also a woman, but a woman rather of symbolic than real existence. What is the difference? Tradition gives the following account of her:--