s looked gravely into
their glasses, and Bacchus and Frau Rosa were pale and silent, and we
heard only the old man's teeth chattering in his skull. 'Well! I
_could_ write,' he went on, 'and I wrote now just what was asked of me:
and from that time my life went on in riot and merriment, and there was
none so gay in Bremen as Balthasar the Bottomless. I drank up all that
was oldest and most precious in the cellar. I never went to church, but
when the bells rang I came down here and sat down by the best cask and
let the tap run into my goblet. As I became old a creepy feeling would
now and then come over me, but I drowned all thoughts of death in wine.
I had no wife to lament and no children to comfort me: and so on and so
on for long years till from very weakness I longed to rest in the
grave. Then one day I felt as if I were awake and yet couldn't get up,
my eyes wouldn't open, my fingers were stiff, my legs were like logs of
wood, and I heard the people come to my bed side, and they felt me all
over and said, "Old Balthasar is gone at last." This really frightened
me. Dead and not asleep? Dead and still thinking? Though my heart had
ceased to beat, something within me beat loudly enough.' 'Your soul,
poor fellow,' they whispered. Balthasar nodded and went on. 'Then they
measured my length and my breadth to make the six boards ready, and put
me in with a hard cushion of shavings under my head and nailed up the
coffin, and carried me out into our Lady's churchyard. I heard the bell
tolling in the Cathedral, though no eye wept for me; and my soul was
ever more frightened because I couldn't sleep. They had dug my grave. I
can still hear the whistle of the rope which they drew up as I lay down
below. Then they threw stones and earth on me, and it was silent all
around me. But my soul grew more and more terrified as it drew towards
evening. I knew a little prayer from old times, but my lips wouldn't
move. I heard ten--eleven--strike, and at last TWELVE,--when a fearful
blow resounded on my coffin'.... A blow that made the hall re-echo now
burst open the door of the room, and a great white figure appeared on
the threshold. By the wine and the horrors of the night, I had been so
ecstasised as to be taken out of myself. I did not scream or jump up,
but stared quietly at this new apparition of terror, and simply said,
'Well, I suppose this is the Devil.'

Have you realised the fearful moment in Don Giovanni, when heavy steps
ring