countess was awaiting him for supper. No one
ate a morsel. The pastor had no appetite, neither had the countess,
nor her companion. The air was too full of the coming event to allow
of such a gross thing as eating.

After supper the countess withdrew to her room, and Herr Mahok went to
the greenhouse, where the sacristan had made himself comfortable with
wine and meat, and had kept up the fires in the oven. The servants had
been kept in ignorance of what was going on; they had never heard the
midnight mass, nor the wild shrieks and infamous songs of the
inhabitants of the vault, and the countess would not allow the ears of
her innocent handmaidens to be polluted with such horrors. Therefore,
every one in the castle slept. The pastor watched alone. At first Herr
Mahok tried to pass the long hours of the night in reading his
prayers, but as his habitual hour for sleep drew near he had to fight
a hard battle with his closing eyelids. He was afraid that if he
slumbered his imagination would reproduce the countess's dream, to
which, be it said, he did not give credence; at the same time, he did
not wholly doubt. Generally, he found that his breviary provoked
sleep, and now he thought it better to close the book, and try what
conversation with the sacristan would do as a means to keep awake.

The clerk's discourse naturally turned upon ghostly appearances; he
told stories of a monk without a head, of spirits that appeared on
certain nights in the year, of hobgoblins and witches, all of which he
had either seen with his own eyes or had heard of from persons whose
veracity was unimpeachable.

"Folly! lies!" said the excellent pastor; but he could not help a
creeping sensation coming over him. If he could even have smoked, it
would have strengthened his nerves; but smoking was forbidden in the
castle. The countess would have smelled it, as the giant in the old
fairy tale smelled human flesh.

When the sacristan found that all his wonderful tales of ghosts and
hobgoblins were considered lies, he thought it was no use tiring
himself talking, and as soon as he ceased sleep began to fall upon his
eyelids. Seated upon a stool, his head leaning against the wall, his
mouth open, he slept profoundly, to the envy, if not the admiration,
of the good pastor, who would willingly have followed his example.
Soon some very unmusical sounds made themselves heard. The sacristan
snored in all manner of keys, in all variations of nasal discord