Then Berbel, in a rage, used to overwhelm him with abuse, while Kateline gave vent to her dissatisfaction in thick unintelligible utterances; but he, regardless of both, lit his old box pipe and set himself to describe his endless peregrinations to the ghosts of the German warriors buried in the cavern sixteen centuries before, calling upon each of them by name, and addressing them as personages still living. From this it will be understood with what disgust the arrival of the maniac came to be regarded by Kateline and Berbel; in fact for both it was nothing less than a calamity. Now in the year we are speaking of, Yégof, having failed to return to them at the proper time, induced the sisters to believe that he was dead and to rejoice at the idea of seeing no more of him. But for many days Wetterhexe had remarked an extraordinary movement going on in the neighboring gorges, and men marching off in bodies, shouldering their muskets, from the sides of Falkenstein and Donon. Clearly something was taking place out of the common. Recollecting that the year before Yégof had informed the phantoms of the cave that his armies, in countless hosts, were coming to invade the country, the sorceress was seized with a vague apprehension and anxiety to learn the cause of so much agitation; but no one came up to the cave, and Kateline having made her rounds on the previous Sunday, could not have been induced to stir out for the gift of a kingdom. In this state of apprehension, Wetterhexe went and came upon the side of the mountain and became hourly more restless and irritable. During the whole of that Saturday events assumed quite another aspect. From nine o'clock in the morning deep and heavy explosions began to growl like a continuous storm among the thousand echoes of the mountain; while far away in the direction of Donon, the swift lightnings swept up across the sky among the peaks; then toward night the discharges deepening in intensity filled the silent gorges with an indescribable tumult. At every report the Hengst, the Gantzlee, the Giromani, and the Grosmann cliffs seemed to echo to their lowest depths. "What can it be?" cried Berbel. "Has the end of the world come?" Then re-entering her lurking-place, and finding Kateline crouched in her corner and munching a potato, Berbel shook her roughly and hissed out:--"Fool! have you got no ears? Is there anything that you fear? You are good for nothing but eating, drinking, and mumbling. Oh, you idiot!"