Then Berbel would become furious, and overwhelm him with taunts and abuse, while Kateline would sit clucking with an angry look; but he, without taking any notice of them, lit his pipe--made of old boxwood--and began to relate his distant peregrinations to the souls of the German warriors interred in the cavern sixteen centuries ago, calling them by their names, and speaking to them like living beings. I leave you to imagine whether Berbel and Kateline saw the fool arrive with pleasure; to them it was a positive calamity. Now, this year, Yégof not having come, the two sisters thought he was dead, and were rejoicing in the idea of never seeing him any more. During the last few days, however, Wetterhexe had remarked the agitation that prevailed in the neighbouring gorges; people departing in large bodies, gun on shoulder, from the regions of the Falkenstein and the Donon. Evidently something out of the common was taking place. The witch, remembering that the year before Yégof had related to the souls of the warriors that his innumerable followers were shortly going to invade the country, felt a sort of vague uneasiness. She would have given anything to know the reason of this unusual disturbance, but no one came up to the rock where they dwelt, and Kateline having gone her usual journey the Sunday before, would not have stirred for an empire. In this state of things, Wetterhexe wandered over the mountain-side, getting more and more anxious and distraught. During the whole of this particular Saturday, things went even further. From nine o'clock in the morning, loud and heavy explosions rolled like the sound of a tempest amid the thousand echoes of the mountain; and in the distance, towards the Donon, swift lightnings flashed across the sky between the tall tops of the mountains; then, towards night, noises still more deep and formidable resounded through the silent gorges. At each explosion, the summits of the Hengst, the Gantzlée, the Giromani, the Grosmann, were heard to echo back their answer through the very depths of the abyss. "What is that?" asked Berbel, of herself. "Is it the end of the world?" Then, re-entering the cavern, and seeing Kateline squatting in her corner, nibbling a potato, she shook her roughly, exclaiming, in a hissing voice: "Idiot! do you, then, hear nothing? You are not afraid of anything--not you! You eat, you drink, you cluck! Oh! you monster!" She snatched her potato furiously away, and sat down, quite trembling with passion, by the warm spring which was sending up its grey clouds to the vaulted roof of the cavern.