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Updated: May 18, 2025
So we sat for a quarter of an hour. At last I ventured to remark "But sometimes the count gets angry with his daughter?" Knapwurst started, and fixing a sinister, almost a fierce and hostile eye upon me, answered "I know, I know!" I watched him narrowly, thinking I might learn something now in support of my theory, but he simply added ironically
From this watch-tower we shall command a view of the far distance all round. The passes of the Rhéthal, of Steinbach, Koche Plate, and of the whole line of the Black Forest are under our eye. Let the Jew pedlars and the dealers beware! And the noble fellows did what they promised. Hugh the Wolf was at their head. Knapwurst told me all about it sitting up one night." "Who is Knapwurst?"
Knapwurst gravely laid his pipe on the table, and reverently spreading his hand upon the folio, said in a voice that seemed to issue from the bottom of his consciousness; or, if you like it better, from the bottom of a twenty-gallon cask "Doctor Fritz, here is the law and the prophets!" "How so? what do you mean?" "Parchment old parchment that is what I love!
Now that explains why Sperver came to me about midnight to ask if anybody had gone out. I said no, which was quite true, for I never saw you going out." "But pray, Monsieur Knapwurst, do for pity's sake let me in, and I will tell you all about that by-and-by." "Come, come, sir, a little patience."
It was then about four in the morning. Knapwurst made me wait a terribly long time. His little lodge, cut in the rock, remained silent; I thought the little humpbacked wretch would never have done dressing; for of course I supposed he would be in bed and asleep. I rang again. This time his grotesque figure appeared abruptly, and he cried to me from the door in a fury "Who are you?"
And he took his lantern. "Good night, gentlemen." "Stop wait for me," cried Gideon. "I can see Fritz is sleepy; we will go down together." "Very gladly, Sperver; on our way we will have a word with Trumpf, the butler. He is downstairs with the rest, and Knapwurst is telling them tales." "All right. Good night, Fritz." "Good night, Gideon. Don't forget to send for me if the count is taken worse."
"Aha!" cried Knapwurst with a glow of satisfaction lighting up his hideous features; "you mean Hedwige and Huldine, the two wives of Hugh Lupus." And laying down his volume he descended from his ladder to speak more at his ease. His eyes glistened, and the delight of gratified vanity beamed from them as he displayed his vast erudition.
Sperver kept on humming and laughing. Suddenly putting his hand upon the dwarf's misshapen back, he cried "Silence! Here is Knapwurst, our historian and chronicler! He is preparing to speak. This hump holds all the history of the house of Nideck from the beginning of time!"
"Sir," said Knapwurst, pointing with his yellow hand to the portraits, "Hugh of Nideck, the first of his illustrious race, married, in 832, Hedwige of Lutzelbourg, who brought to him in dowry the counties of Giromani and Haut Barr, the castles of Geroldseck, Teufelshorn, and others. Hugh Lupus had no issue by his first wife, who died young, in the year of our Lord 837.
Look at Sperver! why, if Count Ludwig was alive, Sperver's bones would long ago have been rattling in chains; instead of which he is head huntsman at the castle." All my theories were now in a state of disorganisation. I laid my head between my hands and thought a long while. Knapwurst, supposing that I was asleep, had turned to his folio again.
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