Page 149 - DENG401_Advance Communication Skills

Advanced Communication Skills

Notes
Probably from fear that any report of his being still alive might leak out to the Kander
Valley, he never confided to a soul his identity nor his story, until eventually, on his
deathbed, he confessed it to the priest. He now lies in the third grave on the left as you
enter the narrow churchyard overhanging the river valley at Kippel.
He asked me whether I had during my stay in the Kander Valley noticed, near the entrance
to the tunnel, a small square tower. This, he said, was referred to in the document as "The
Mice Tower". Certainly I had seen it, but had not paid it much attention on account of its
insignificant appearance. But, muttering the old Swiss proverb "Little pigs nevertheless
make good pork," he tottered off to the church to search the muniment chest for the paper.
Meanwhile I waited, sipping my coffee and pondering on the inscription on the beam--
"God protect this house and all who go in and out."
Presently he returned with the document and, deciphering with some difficulty the crabbed
characters on the timeworn paper, he read to me the following grim story. I give merely
the substance of it, omitting the lengthy if picturesque detail.

A note by the father-confessor explained it was the dying confession of a man who had
come mysteriously to Kippel some years previously, and had established himself there as
a recluse, living in a small hut high up on the mountain side. Being now about to meet his
Maker, and no longer fearing the vengeance of man, he confessed that he was the only
surviving son of Johann Kostler, a former well-to-do farmer in the valley of the Kander.
(His chalet is still to be seen in Kandersteg today.)
While this man, Albert Kostler, was yet a young man, the notorious Count Rollo, known
as "Rollo the Roisterer," was tyrant of the valley. The Count lived in the old castle of
Tellesberg perched high upon a solitary crag commanding the valley. From this fastness
with his band of armed retainers he exacted from the inhabitants all that he wanted from
time to time in the shape of food or money or cattle, etc. When his demands were not met
with the promptitude desired, he inflicted imprisonment or torture or even death on the
wretched peasant; so that the whole valley was terrorised.
The scene of these cruelties was usually the Mice Tower at the head of the valley, where his
victims went through a form of mock trial before being condemned to the punishment
which he amused himself in devising. The upper room of this tower was also the scene of
wild orgies and carousals on the part of himself and his boon companions.
Count Rollo had some iron staples let into the outer wall of the Mice Tower, to which his
victim was triced up by the wrist and ankles in a spread-eagle position, and exposed naked
for hours to the blazing sun in the summer and to the freezing wind in the winter. (These
staples can still be seen on the walls of this harmless-looking building.)
My host, having read the confession to me, went on to say that tradition maintains that
Count Rollo the Roisterer, after a life of cruelty and debaucheries, came to a bad end--as
bad men do.
The story went that he was investigating the Blausee, or Blue Lake, which lies below his
castle, when a sudden rise of the water from melting snow in the mountains forced him to
try to cross the lake on a fallen tree. In doing so he slipped and his foot became entangled
and held, as by a vice, among the branches. The water, rising gradually higher and higher,
submerged him inch by inch; and though his screams attracted his followers they were
unable to do anything to save him before he was finally submerged and drowned. My
friend had not himself been to the Blausee, but he maintained that on particularly clear
days Rollo's skeleton can still be seen among the trees at the bottom of that wonderful
blue lake.
Contd...

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