It was amid the tortures of hunger that the whole of the nineteenth day since the arrival of the confederates at the Falkenstein was passed. They spoke no more; crouched on the ground, with pinched faces, they remained lost in an endless reverie. At times they looked at each other with flashing eye, as if ready to devour each other; then they grew calm and gloomy again. When Yégof's raven, flying from peak to peak, was seen approaching this scene of misfortune, old Materne shouldered his carbine; but immediately the bird of ill-omen would take flight at its utmost speed, uttering dismal croakings; and the arm of the old hunter fell powerless. [Illustration] CHAPTER XXVII. As if the exhaustion of hunger had not sufficed to fill up the measure of the misery they were enduring, the unhappy mountaineers, keeping their dreary vigils on the Falkenstein, only opened their mouths to threaten and accuse each other. "Don't touch me!" screamed Hexe-Baizel, in a voice like a polecat's, to those who looked at her, "don't touch me, or I will bite you!" Louise grew delirious; her large blue eyes, in place of real objects, saw only shadows flitting over the plateau, skimming over the tops of the trees, and plant themselves on the old tower. "Here are provisions!" she would exclaim. Then the others would be furious against the poor child, crying out angrily that she wanted to make game of them, and that she had best beware. Jerôme alone still remained perfectly calm; but the great quantity of snow which he had drunk to appease the inward anguish that was consuming him, bathed all his body and his face with a cold sweat. Doctor Lorquin had tied a handkerchief round his loins, and tightened it more and more, declaring that he thus satisfied his stomach. He was seated against the tower, with his eyes shut; from hour to hour he opened them, saying: "We are at the first--at the second--at the third period. One day more, and all will be over!" He would then begin a dissertation upon the Druids, on Odin, Brahma, Pythagoras, making Latin and Greek quotations, announcing the approaching transformation of the people of Harberg into wolves, into foxes, into animals of all sorts. "For my part," he would exclaim, "I shall be a lion! I will eat fifteen pounds of beef a-day!" Then, recovering himself: