hold herself up. She sank upon
her knees, and looked up at the priest in mute horror. Hardly knowing
what she did, she gazed in utter despair at the tall figure lit up as
it was by the rays of the moon, which played round his head like a
halo.

The abbe put the key into the lock of the chapel door. The countess
caught his hand; her fright amounted to agony.

"Do not--do not open it!" she cried. "Inside is hell let loose."

With an elevation of his head, the abbe answered proudly--

"Nec portae inferi--the gates of hell shall not prevail"; and then he
turned the key, and the heavy iron door swung open, and disclosed the
actors in the strange drama.

On the altar all the candles were lighted, and their light showed with
distinctness every incident of the performance, every feature in the
faces of the performers.

What a scene!

On one side of the vault ran a long table, round which was seated,
eating and drinking, not the countess's ancestors and ancestresses,
but all the servants of her household. The maids, who were so strictly
guarded, were here in the company of the men who were so rigorously
excluded. The countess could, therefore, see that these were
flesh-and-blood ghosts which had so long haunted her ancient castle.
Each of her handmaidens had a lover in either the steward, bailiff,
gamekeeper, or clerk in the neighborhood. The nervous housemaid, who
at night was afraid of her own shadow, was now drinking out of the
glass of the innkeeper; the virtuous maid was embraced by the mayor's
footman; the portress, an elderly virgin, held a jug in her hand,
while she executed a clog-dance upon the table. All the rest clapped
hands, shrieked, sang at the top of their voices, and beat the table
as if it were a big drum. The shepherd, who represented the countess's
grandfather, sat upon the monument of the chancellor, his legs round
the cross, and played the bagpipes. It was this instrument which at
the burlesque of vespers imitated the harmonium. Upon the gravestone
of the first archbishop the beer-barrel was set up. The maids were all
dressed in the countess's silk dresses, with the exception of the
female coachman, who, as usual, wore man's clothes, but by way of
symmetry her lover, the coachman of the neighboring brewery, was
dressed in woman's clothes. The countess recognized on the head of
this bearded fellow her nightcap, and round his body her cloak,
trimmed with her best lace. Worst of all, at the top of th