Let us enter the banquet hall. It is night. By my faith! Those are curious candelabras. They are made of flesh and bone. Ten slaves--all burnt by the sun, worn and barely clad in rags--are ranked five on one side, five on the other of the table. They stand motionless as statues and hold aloft large flaming torches of wax that barely serve to light the place. A double row of rounded oak trunks, a sort of rustic colonnade, divides the spacious hall into three compartments along its full length, reaching at one end the door of the _mahl_, and at the other to the count's chamber, which, in turn communicates with the apartments of Godegisele and her women.
Between the two rows of pillars stands the table of the count and of the leudes, his peers. To the right and left, and on the other sides of the two rows of pillars, stand two other tables--one is reserved for the warriors of inferior rank, the other for the principal servants of the count: his seneschal, his equerry, his chamberlains, seeing that the seigneurs imitate closely the customs and style of the royal courts. In the four corners of the hall, the floor of which is, obedient to custom, strewn with green leaves in summer, and straw in winter, stand four large barrels, two of hydromel, one of beer, and one of herbed wine, Auvergne wine mixed with spices and absinthe--a beverage pressed by the slaves of the burg. Along the wainscoting hang the count's hunting trophies, together with his arms of war and the chase--heads of stags, does and wild goats, all garnished with their horns; wild boars' and wolves' heads with their fangs exposed. The flesh and skin have been removed from these trophies; nothing remains but the whitened bones. Boar-spears, pikes, hunting-knives and horns, fishing-nets, falcon coifs, implements of war, lances, francisques or double edged axes, swords, bucklers and shields painted in garish colors--all these are ranged along the walls. On the table lie spread sheep and wild boars roasted whole, mountains of ham and smoked venison, avalanches of cabbage in vinegar, the latter being a favorite dish with the Franks; chunks of beef, mutton and veal of the cattle fattened in the count's yards; small game, poultry, carps and pikes, the latter of which are of extraordinary size; vegetables, fruit and cheese raised and prepared on the fertile fields and farms of Auvergne; bowls and amphoras, incessantly replenished by butlers who run from the tables to the barrels and back again, are as speedily emptied by the Franks with the aid of wild bulls' horns that serve as their usual goblets. The horn used by Neroweg must have belonged to an animal of monstrous size. It is black and hooped from top to bottom in gold and silver. From time to time the seigneur makes a sign, whereupon several slaves standing at one end of the hall with drums and hunting horns, strike up an infernal music, which, however, is less discordant and deafening than the cries and laughter of the blockish Teutons, gorged gluttons, most of whom are at an advanced state of intoxication.