They do not take heed, only half rising in a dreamlike manner when he had his lackeys grip them under the arms and drag them out through the portals; whereupon at last, albeit moaning and groaning, craning their necks with a tormented look at the cathedral that sparkled behind us in the bright sunlight, they follow us back to the city. Our friends and I, we delicately ask again and again on the way back: what in the world happened to them, what experience so awful as to alter their cast of mind; to which, with a benevolent gaze, they squeeze our hands, peer thoughtfully at the ground, and from time to time – dear God! with a look in their eyes that still breaks my heart – they wipe tears from their eyes. Whereupon, having arrived back at their lodgings, they adroitly and gracefully fashion a cross out of strips of birch bark pressed into a mound of wax between two candles ordinarily used by the maid, and set it down on the big table in the middle of the room; and as the gathering of friends that grows from hour to hour stands by in scattered groups, ringing their hands, watching these silent ghostly goings-on, speechless with pity, the brothers each take a seat at the table; and as though their senses are closed off to any other apparent reality, they silently fold their hands in prayer. They crave neither the food the maid brought each morning on the express orders of their comrades nor, despite their apparent fatigue, the beds made up for them at nightfall in the adjoining room. And so as not to further arouse the indignation of the innkeeper, who is already vexed by this curious display, their friends are obliged to sit down at the richly laden table, and salting the dishes prepared for a goodly company with their bitter tears, had no choice but to gobble it all up. Then all of a sudden the clock strikes midnight; after listening for a fleeting moment to the dull clang of the clock, your four sons suddenly rise as one; and as we gaze with fearful anticipation in their direction, the folded napkins falling from our hands, wondering what in Heaven’s name might happen next after such a strange and disturbing beginning, with grisly, ghoulish voices they start singing the Gloria in excelsis. This is how leopards and wolves must sound when in the icy heart of winter they bellow at the firmament; the supporting pillars of the house shook, I assure you, and struck by the visible breath of their lungs, the windows rattled, threatening to shatter, as though pummeled by the force of handfuls of sand flung against them. Struck dumb by this terrible scene, we stagger apart in all directions, our hair standing on end; leaving coat and hat behind, we scatter hither and thither along the outlying streets, which, within moments, are teeming with more than a hundred other people torn in terror from their sleep; breaking down the inn door, the crowd storms up the stairs and into the room to seek out the source of that terrifying and sickening scream that sounded like a pitiful plea for forgiveness, destined for God’s ear, issued from the lips of eternally damned sinners in the lowest flaming fundaments of Hell. Finally, when the church bell tolls one o’clock, without having taken the slightest notice of the innkeeper’s angry protests or the shaken outcries of the gathered throng, they fall silent; with a cloth they wipe the sweat – dripping in fat drops on chin and breast – from their brows, and, spreading out their coats, stretch themselves out on the floorboards to catch an hour’s rest from such torturous affairs. Indulgent up to this point, as soon as the innkeeper sees them shut their eyes, he makes the sign of the cross over their heads; and, relieved to be free for the moment from this calamity, he assures everyone that all will be better in the morning and bids the mysteriously muttering throng that has gathered to clear the room. But, alas! at the cock’s first cry, the poor unfortunates rise again to recommence the same desolate, ghostlike cloister life around the table, from which exhaustion alone had compelled them to desist for a while. Accepting neither the admonitions nor the offers of help from the innkeeper, whose heart melts at their piteous condition, they bid him politely turn away the friends who would otherwise faithfully gather every morning in their rooms; they ask nothing of him but bread and water and, if possible, a little straw strewn at night; as a consequence of which, the man who had previously made much money off their merriment feels compelled to report the whole unhappy business to the authorities, and to ask that these four people, doubtless inhabited by an evil spirit, be duly conducted out of his house. Whereupon, on the orders of the magistrate, they are made to undergo a medical examination, and as they are found to be mad, they are brought to and lodged, as you know, in the madhouse founded within the walls of our city, thanks to the kindness of our late departed emperor, to benefit such poor unfortunates.”

This and much more was recounted by the draper Gotthelf Veit, the bulk of whose statement we have decided to withhold, as, in our view, enough has already been said to serve our examination of the context of what happened; whereupon he once again enjoined the woman to under no circumstances involve him in the event of a legal investigation into the matter.

Three days thereafter, still deeply shaken by this account and with the aid of a lady friend who held her arm, as the weather was nice, the woman went out to visit the cloister with the sad intention of seeing for herself the place where God had, as though with invisible bolts of lightning, laid her sons low; the two women, however, found the entrance to the cathedral all boarded up, on account of construction work, and could only with great pains, standing on tiptoes and peeking through a gap in the planks, make out the splendid sparkling stained-glass rose window in the rear of the church. Many hundreds of workers, singing merry songs, were engaged within, standing on narrow, intricately interlaced scaffolding, which added a good third to the height of the steeples, and decking the rooftops and spires, theretofore covered only with slate, with sturdy sheets of copper that shimmered in the bright rays of sunlight. Deep black storm clouds rimmed by a golden glimmer hung overhead, framing the building; the thunderstorm had already played itself out over Aachen and the surrounding region, and after flinging a last few feeble bolts of lightning in the direction of the cathedral, it sank with a dissatisfied grumbling in the east, dissolving into a mist. And it so happened that, just as the women, deeply preoccupied by their thoughts, descended the steps of the large cloister building in which the sisters lived, perceiving this double drama in the sky, a passing sister chanced to learn the identity of the woman standing under the portal; whereupon the abbess, informed of a letter in the latter’s possession concerning the planned acts on Corpus Christi Day, promptly sent a sister down to bid the Dutch woman come up to see her. Though momentarily a bit taken aback, the latter, no less honorably inclined in her comportment, resolved to accept the request; and while her friend waited in an antechamber next door, the folding doors to the lovely loft itself were flung open before the Dutch woman as she climbed the steps. There she found the abbess, a noble woman of serene royal bearing, seated in a chair, her foot resting on a footstool with legs in the shape of dragon’s claws; beside her on a writing table lay a musical score. After ordering a chair for the visitor, the abbess told her that she had been informed by the mayor of her arrival in the city; and after asking her in a kindly fashion as to the welfare of her unfortunate sons, and forthwith encouraging her to try to accept the fate that befell them, as it could not be altered – she expressed her wish to see the letter that the preacher had written to his friend, the schoolteacher in Antwerp. The Dutch woman, who was savvy enough to fathom what possible consequences this might have for her sons, was momentarily nonplussed by this request; but since the honorable face of the abbess instilled immediate confidence, and gave no cause to believe that it was her intention to make public use of its contents, the visitor, after a brief hesitation, pulled the letter out from between her breasts and handed it to the noble lady, then fervently kissed her hand. As the abbess read through the letter, the woman cast a fleeting glance at the musical score carelessly left open on the desk; and since, in light of the draper’s account, she suspected that it might well have been the powerful effect of the music that on that awful day troubled and twisted the minds of her poor sons, turning around in her chair, she timidly inquired of the sister who stood behind her: “Was this perchance the musical work performed in the cathedral on the morning of that curious Corpus Christi Day celebration?” Upon the young sister’s reply – “Yes!” she remembered hearing about it, and that, when not in use, it tended to lie open in the room of the honorable abbess – the woman leapt up out of her chair, clearly agitated, and with all sorts of thoughts running through her mind, leaned over the desk. She gazed at the unknown musical notations, wherewith a terrible spirit appeared to secretly trace a circle, and when her eyes fell on the Gloria in excelsis, she suddenly felt as if the earth sank beneath her feet. She felt as though the total shock of the musical art that had destroyed her sons now passed in a swell over her head; she feared that, from the sheer sight of it, she was losing her mind, and after quickly pressing the page to her lips with a boundless stirring of humility and submission before the omnipotence of God, she sat back down in the chair again. Meanwhile, the abbess had finished reading through the letter and said as she folded it up: “God himself shielded the cloister on that wondrous day from the insolence of your sadly misguided sons. Whatever tool he employed may be immaterial to you, as a Protestant. You would also find it hard to believe what I could tell you about it. For you must know that not a living soul can tell just who it was seated at the organ bench at that terrible hour, serenely directing the musical work that you find flung open there, as the riot of destruction threatened to break out in our midst. According to testimony taken on the morning of the following day in the presence of the cloister caretaker and several other men and duly deposited in the archive, it has been established that Sister Antonia, the only person able to direct that work, lay ailing, unconscious, her limbs motionless, in a corner of her cloister cell throughout the time of the entire performance; a sister, who, as a relative, was assigned to attend to her physical care, never left her bed the whole morning on which Corpus Christi Day was celebrated in the cathedral. Indeed, Sister Antonia herself would doubtless have confirmed and verified the fact that it was not she who suddenly appeared at the organ in so strange and astonishing a manner, if her altogether immobile state had permitted her to be questioned, and the poor sick sister were not laid low on the evening of that same day by the nervous fever, a condition not previously deemed life-threatening, but from which she died. And having been informed of this incident, the archbishop of Trier has already made the declaration that alone can explain it, namely that Saint Cecilia herself performed this at the same time terrible and wondrous miracle; and I have just received a brief from the pope in which he confirmed its veracity.” Whereupon, she gave the woman back the letter, which she had merely asked to see to get a more detailed account of what she already knew, with the promise that she would make no further use of it; and after asking the mother if there was any hope of her sons’ recovery, and if perchance she could help with money or some other means of support, a prospect which the woman, kissing the hem of her gown, tearfully declined, the abbess offered her hand in friendship and bid her farewell.

Here ends this legend.