The Baron stood up, and lifted his huge arm to lead the toast.

'Werner and his Bride!'

Not a voice followed him. There was a sudden intimation of the call
being echoed; but it snapped, and ended in shuffling tones, as if the
hall-door had closed on the response.

'What 's this?' roared the Baron, in that caged wild beast voice
Margarita remembered she had heard in the Cathedral Square.

No one replied.

'Speak! or I'll rot you a fathom in the rock, curs!'

'Herr Baron!' said Henker Rothhals impressively; 'the matter is, that
there's something unholy among us.'

The Baron's goblet flew at his head before the words were uttered.

'I'll make an unholy thing of him that says it,' and Werner lowered at
them one by one.

'Then I say it, Herr Baron!' pursued Henker Rothhals, wiping his
frontispiece: 'The Devil has turned against you at last. Look up there--
Ah, it's gone now; but where's the man sitting this side saw it not?'

The Baron made one spring, and stood on the board.