The nature of the verses soon led Philipson to comprehend that he was in presence of the Initiated, or the Wise Wen; names which were applied to the celebrated judges of the Secret Tribunal, which continued at that period to subsist in Swabia, Franconia, and other districts of the east of Germany, which was called, perhaps from the frightful and frequent occurrence of executions by command of those invisible judges, the Red Land.  Philipson had often heard that the seat of a Free Count, or chief of the Secret Tribunal, was secretly instituted even on the left bank of the Rhine, and that it maintained itself in Alsace, with the usual tenacity of those secret societies, though Duke Charles of Burgundy had expressed a desire to discover and to discourage its influence so far as was possible, without exposing himself to danger from the thousands of poniards which that mysterious tribunal could put in activity against his own life;—­an awful means of defence, which for a long time rendered it extremely hazardous for the sovereigns of Germany, and even the emperors themselves, to put down by authority those singular associations.

* * * * *

He lay devising the best means of obviating the present danger, while the persons whom he beheld glimmered before him, less like distinct and individual forms, than like the phantoms of a fever, or the phantasmagoria with which a disease of the optic nerves has been known to people a sick man’s chamber.  At length they assembled in the centre of the apartment where they had first appeared, and seemed to arrange themselves into form and order.  A great number of black torches were successively lighted, and the scene became distinctly visible.  In the centre of the hall, Philipson could now perceive one of the altars which are sometimes to be found in ancient subterranean chapels.  But we must pause, in order briefly to describe, not the appearance only, but the nature and constitution, of this terrible court.

Behind the altar, which seemed to be the central point, on which all eyes were bent, there were placed in parallel lines two benches covered with black cloth.  Each was occupied by a number of persons, who seemed assembled as judges; but those who held the foremost bench were fewer, and appeared of a rank superior to those who crowded the seat most remote from the altar.  The first seemed to be all men of some consequence, priests high in their order, knights, or noblemen; and notwithstanding an appearance of equality which seemed to pervade this singular institution, much more weight was laid upon their opinion, or testimonies.  They were called Free Knights, Counts, or whatever title they might bear, while the inferior class of the judges were only termed Free and worthy Burghers.  For it must be observed, that the Vehmique Institution,[1] which was the name that it commonly bore, although its power consisted in a wide system of espionage, and the tyrannical application of force which acted upon it, was yet, (so rude were the ideas of enforcing public law,) accounted to confer a privilege on the country in which it was received, and only freemen were allowed to experience its influence.  Serfs and peasants could neither have a place among the Free Judges, their assessors, or assistants; for there was in this assembly even some idea of trying the culprit by his peers.