‘False—­not true:  go on, dear aunty,’ said Margarita, catching the word.

‘I believe she knows as much as I do!’ ejaculated Aunt Lisbeth; ’such are girls nowadays.  When I was young-oh! for a maiden to know anything then —­oh! it was general reprobation.  No one thought of confessing it.  We blushed and held down our eyes at the very idea.  Well, the Electress! she was—­you must guess.  So she called for her caudle at eleven o’clock at night.  What do you think that was?  Well, there was spirit in it:  not to say nutmeg, and lemon, and peach kernels.  She wanted me to sit with her, but I begged my mistress to keep me from the naughty woman:  and no friend of Hilda of Bayern was Bertha of Bohmen, you may be sure.  Oh! the things she talked while she was drinking her caudle.

Isentrude sat with her,’and said it was fearful!—­beyond blasphemy! and that she looked like a Bible witch, sitting up drinking and swearing and glaring in her nightclothes and nightcap.  She was on a journey into Hungary, and claimed the hospitality of the castle on her way there.  Both were widows.  Well, it was a quarter to twelve.  The Electress dropped back on her pillow, as she always did when she had finished the candle.  Isentrude covered her over, heaped up logs on the fire, wrapped her dressing-gown about her, and prepared to sleep.  It was Winter, and the wind howled at the doors, and rattled the windows, and shook the arras—­Lord help us!  Outside was all snow, and nothing but forest; as you saw when you came to me there, Gretelchen.  Twelve struck.  Isentrude was dozing; but she says that after the last stroke she woke with cold.  A foggy chill hung in the room.  She looked at the Electress, who had not moved.  The fire burned feebly, and seemed weighed upon:  Herr Je!—­she thought she heard a noise.  No.  Quite quiet!  As heaven preserve her, says slip, the smell in that room grew like an open grave, clammily putrid.  Holy Virgin!  This time she was certain she heard a noise; but it seemed on both sides of her.  There was the great door leading to the first landing and state-room; and opposite exactly there was the panel of the secret passage.  The noises seemed to advance as if step by step, and grew louder in each ear as she stood horrified on the marble of the hearth.  She looked at the Electress again, and her eyes were wide open; but for all Isentrude’s calling, she would not wake.  Only think!  Now the noise increased, and was a regular tramp-grate, tramp-screw sound-coming nearer and nearer:  Saints of mercy!  The apartment was choking with vapours.  Isentrude made a dart, and robed herself behind a curtain of the bed just as the two doors opened.  She could see through a slit in the woven work, and winked her eyes which she had shut close on hearing the scream of the door-hinges—­winked her eyes to catch a sight for moment—­we are such sinful, curious creatures!—­What she saw then, she says she shall never forget; nor