This is what is related concerning the Blutfeld, and certainly to see this gorge enclosed within the mountains like an immense trap, without any other outlet than a narrow footpath, it is easy to understand how the Germans were taken at a disadvantage and fell an easy prey to their conquerors. Robin did not reach the spot till between seven and eight o'clock, just as the moon was rising. The worthy fellow had descended the precipice a hundred times, but never had he beheld the place so brightly illuminated, and at the same time of so gloomy an aspect. At a distance, his white cart, at the bottom of the abyss, looked to him exactly like one of those enormous stones, covered with snow, beneath which the Germans had been buried. It was at the entrance of the gorge, behind a thick cluster of shrubs, and beside it the little torrent ran murmuring in a slender stream, bright as steel, and sparkling like diamonds. When he arrived there, the shepherd began to look for the key of the padlock; then, having unlocked the shed, he crept in on his hands and knees, and found, very fortunately, not only his sheepskin, but an old hatchet, which he had quite forgotten. But judge of his surprise when, on issuing from it, he saw the madman Yégof appear at the turn of the footpath, and come straight toward him in the bright moonlight. The honest man immediately remembered the fearful story told in the kitchen of Bois-de-Chênes, and he felt afraid; but quite another feeling came over him when behind the fool, at fifteen or twenty paces, he beheld, stealthily approaching in their turn, five gray wolves, two big and three smaller ones. At first he took them for dogs, but they were wolves. They followed Yégof step by step, and he did not appear to see them; his raven hovered overhead, flitting from the full moonlight to the shadow of the rocks, and then returning; the wolves, with flaming eyes, their sharp muzzles turned up, were sniffing the air; the fool raised his sceptre. The shepherd pulled-to the door of the shed as quick as lightning, but Yégof did not see him. He advanced into the gorge as into a spacious chamber, to the right and left rose the steep rocks, above which myriads of stars were shining. You might have heard a fly move; the wolves made no noise in walking; all was silent, and the raven had just perched on the top of an old withered oak that grew upon one of the rocks opposite; his shining plumage looked still darker than usual, as he turned his head, and seemed to be listening. It was a strange sight. Robin said to himself:--"The fool sees nothing, hears nothing; they will devour him. If he stumbles, if his foot slips, it is all over with him." But in the middle of the gorge, Yégof, having turned round, sat down upon a stone, and the five wolves round him, still sniffing the air, squatted on their haunches in the snow.