d
conspired against the king's life--Queen Faileube said to the lord, 'My
lord, the viper waits until you are asleep to give you a mortal wound.
She has conspired with Sinnegisile and Gallomagus against your life! She
has poisoned her husband, your faithful Jovius, to live with Droeckteufel.
Let your anger come down upon her like lightning, and your vengeance with
a bloody sword!' And Chilperic, assembling all his council in the castle
of Nideck, said, 'We have cherished a viper; she has plotted our death.
Let her be cut into three pieces. Let Droeckteufel, Sinnegisile, and
Gallomagus perish with her! Let the ravens rejoice!' And the vassals
cried, 'So let it be! The wrath of Chilperic is an abyss into which his
enemies fall and perish!' Then Septimanie was brought to be put to the
torture and examined; a ring of iron was bound around her temples; it was
tightened; her eyes started; her blood-dropping mouth murmured, 'Lord
king, I have offended. Droeckteufel, Gallomagus, and Sinnegisile have also
conspired!' And the following night a festoon of corpses dangled and
swung from the towers of Nideck! The foul birds of prey rejoiced over the
rich spoil. Droeckteufel, what would I not have done for thee? I would
have had thee King of Austrasia, and thou hast forgotten me!"

The guttural voice sank down, and my uncle Bernard, more dead than alive,
breathing a sigh of terror, murmured--

"Oh, I have never done anybody any wrong! I am only a poor old
chronicler! Let me not die without absolution, far from the succour
of the Church!"

The great wooden box full of heather seemed at every effort to escape to
sink deeper and deeper. The poor man thought he was going down into a
gulf, when, happily, Christian reappeared, crying--

"Well, Maitre Bernard, what did I say? here is the storm."

And now the hut was for an instant full of dazzling light, and my worthy
uncle, who was lying facing the door, could see the whole valley lighted
up, with its innumerable fir-trees crowded along the slopes down the
valley as close as the grass of the fields, its rocks piled up on the
banks of the river, which was rolling its sulphurous blue waves over the
rounded boulders of the ravine, and the towers of Nideck rising proudly
in the air fifteen hundred feet above.

Then the darkness covered all up again. That was the first flash.

But in that instant of time he caught sight of a strange figure crouching
at the end of the hut without being ab