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At that moment a merry chime from the church-bells burst out joyously upon the morning air, to announce that a fête was about to take place in the town; for such a gratifying show as the burning of a witch, was a fête for the inhabitants of Hammelburg.
At the upper end of the large Gothic room, forming the interior of the town-hall of Hammelburg, which was formally prepared as a court of trial, sat upon a raised part of the flooring in his chair of state, the Ober-Amtmann; before him were placed, at a velvet-behung table, his schreibers or secretaries; beside him sat, upon a low cushioned stool, his daughter, the fair Fraulein Bertha, surrounded by her tirewomen, who remained standing behind her.
But, after his decease, the edict again fell into disuse; and the town of Hammelburg, as if the spirit of Black Claus, the witchfinder, still hovered about its walls, again commenced to assert its odious reputation, and maintain its hideous boast, of having burned more witches than any other town in Germany. It was on a sultry sunny June morning that I stepped on board the Red River steamboat.
The pile had been already heaped in the market-place of Hammelburg the stake fixed. All was in readiness for the hideous performance about to take place. The guards paced backwards and forwards before the grated doorway, which opened under the terrace of the old town-hall; for there, in that miserable hole, was confined the wretched victim of popular delusion.
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