Supper over, the painter sat for some time over his pipe and his wine, and then, gathering together his sketching impedimenta, quitted the inn and took his way toward the ruins of Oppenheim’s ancient abbey.  It was a calm, windless night, and the silver moon sailed high in the heavens.  Not a sound broke the silence as the young man entered the churchyard.  Seating himself upon a flat tombstone, he proceeded to arrange his canvas and sketching materials; but as he was busied thus his foot struck something hard.  Bending down to remove the obstacle, which he took for a large stone, he found, to his horror, that it was a human skull.  With an ejaculation he cast the horrid relic away from him, and to divert his mind from the grisly incident commenced to work feverishly.  Speedily his buoyant mind cast off the gloomy train of thought awakened by the dreadful find, and for nearly a couple of hours he sat sketching steadily, until he was suddenly startled to hear the clock in the tower above him strike the hour of midnight.

He was gathering his things preparatory to departure, when a strange rustling sound attracted his attention.  Raising his eyes from his task, he beheld a sight which made his flesh creep.  The exposed and half-buried bones of the dead warriors which littered the surface of the churchyard drew together and formed skeletons.  These reared themselves from the graves and stood upright, and as they did so formed grisly and dreadful battalions—­Swedes formed with Swedes and Spaniards with Spaniards.  On a sudden hoarse words of command rang out on the midnight air, and the two companies attacked one another.

The luckless beholder of the dreadful scene felt the warm blood grow chill within his veins.  Hotter and hotter became the fray, and many skeletons sank to the ground as though slain in battle.  One of them, he whose skull the artist had kicked, sank down at the young man’s feet.  In a hollow voice he commanded the youth to tell to the world how they were forced to combat each other because they had been enemies in life, and that they could obtain no rest until they had been buried.

Directly the clock struck one the battle ceased, and the bones once more lay about in disorder.  The artist (who, it need hardly be said, gave no more thought to his picture) hastened back to the inn and in faltering accents related his experiences.  When the Seven Years’ War broke out, not long afterward, the people of Oppenheim declared that the apparition of the skeletons had foretold the event.

The Robbers of the Rhine

For many hundreds of years the valley of the Rhine itself, and the various valleys adjacent, were the haunt of numerous bodies of rapacious and desperate banditti.  The rugged, mountainous nature of the country naturally made lawlessness the more easy there, and till so late as the beginning of the nineteenth century these gangs of robbers were a constant menace to the traveller in Rhineland.  At the time of the French Revolution, indeed, and for some decades thereafter, the district was literally infested with thieves; for the unsettled state of Europe at this date perforce tended to bring desperadoes from far and near, and for a while the inhabitants of the different villages on the banks of the Rhine endured a veritable reign of terror.