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For the rest, Dr. Weber exercised a singular influence over the mind of this negress, and this woman, habitually so gay and forever ready to be amused by nothing, trembled like a leaf when her master’s gray eyes chanced to alight on her.

All this, Master Frantz, seems to have no bearing on the springs of Spinbronn. But wait, wait–you shall see by what a singular concourse of circumstances my story is connected with it.

I told you that birds darted into the cavern, and even other and larger creatures. After the final departure of the patrons, some of the old inhabitants of the village recalled that a young girl named Louise Mueller, who lived with her infirm old grandmother in a cottage on the pitch of the slope, had suddenly disappeared half a hundred years before. She had gone out to look for herbs in the forest, and there had never been any more news of her afterwards, except that, three or four days later, some woodcutters who were descending the mountain had found her sickle and her apron a few steps from the cavern.

From that moment it was evident to everyone that the skeleton which had fallen from the cascade, on the subject of which Haselnoss had turned such fine phrases, was no other than that of Louise Mueller. The poor girl had doubtless been drawn into the gulf by the mysterious influence which almost daily overcame weaker beings!

What could this influence be? None knew. But the inhabitants of Spinbronn, superstitious like all mountaineers, maintained that the devil lived in the cavern, and terror spread in the whole region.

* * * * *

Now one afternoon in the middle of the month of July, 1802, my cousin undertook a new classification of the insects in his bandboxes. He had secured several rather curious ones the preceding afternoon. I was with him, holding the lighted candle with one hand and with the other a needle which I heated red-hot.

Sir Thomas, seated, his chair tipped back against the sill of a window, his feet on a stool, watched us work, and smoked his cigar with a dreamy air.

I stood in with Sir Thomas Hawerburch, and I accompanied him every day to the woods in his carriage. He enjoyed hearing me chatter in English, and wished to make of me, as he said, a thorough gentleman.

The butterflies labeled, Dr. Weber at last opened the box of the largest insects, and said:

“Yesterday I secured a magnificent horn beetle, the great Lucanus cervus of the oaks of the Hartz. It has this peculiarity–the right claw divides in five branches. It’s a rare specimen.”

At the same time I offered him the needle, and as he pierced the insect before fixing it on the cork, Sir Thomas, until then impassive, got up, and, drawing near a bandbox, he began to examine the spider crab of Guiana with a feeling of horror which was strikingly portrayed on his fat vermilion face.

“That is certainly,” he cried, “the most frightful work of the creation. The mere sight of it–it makes me shudder!”

In truth, a sudden pallor overspread his face.

“Bah!” said my tutor, “all that is only a prejudice from childhood–one hears his nurse cry out–one is afraid–and the impression sticks. But if you should consider the spider with a strong microscope, you would be astonished at the finish of his members, at their admirable arrangement, and even at their elegance.”

“It disgusts me,” interrupted the commodore brusquely. “Pouah!”

It had turned over in his fingers.

“Oh! I don’t know why,” he declared, “spiders have always frozen my blood!”

Dr. Weber began to laugh, and I, who shared the feelings of Sir Thomas, exclaimed:

“Yes, cousin, you ought to take this villainous beast out of the box–it is disgusting–it spoils all the rest.”

“Little chump,” he said, his eyes sparkling, “what makes you look at it? If you don’t like it, go take yourself off somewhere.”

Evidently he had taken offense; and Sir Thomas, who was then before the window contemplating the mountain, turned suddenly, took me by the hand, and said to me in a manner full of good will: