Rejection and Flight.
Ekkehard had remained sitting in the bower for a long time after the
others had gone away, and when at last he also rose, he rushed out into
the darkness. He did not know whither his feet were carrying him. In
the morning he found himself on the top of the Hohenkraehen, which was
silent and deserted since the woman of the wood had left it. The
remains of the burnt hut, formed now but a confused mass. On the place
where the sitting-room had once been, was still the Roman stone with
the Mithras. Grass and ferns were growing on it, and a slow-worm was
stealthily creeping up on the old weatherbeaten idol.
Ekkehard burst into a wild laugh. "The chapel of St. Hadwig!" he cried,
striking his breast, with his clenched hand. "Thus, it must be!" He
upset the old Roman stone, and then mounted the rock on the top of the
hill. There, he threw himself down, pressing his forehead against the
cool ground, which had once been touched by Dame Hadwig's foot. Thus,
he remained for a long time. When the scorching rays of the mid-day sun
were falling vertically down, he still lay there, and--slept.
Towards the evening he came back to the Hohentwiel, looking hot and
excited, and having an unsteady gait. Blades of grass clung to the
woolen texture of his habit.
The inhabitants of the castle, shyly stepped out of his way, as if
ill-luck had set her seal on his forehead. In other times they used to
come towards him, to entreat his blessing.
The Duchess had noticed his absence, without making any inquiries about
him. He went up to his tower, and seized a parchment, as if he would
read. It happened to be Gunzo's libel. "Willingly I would ask you, to
try the effect of healing medicine, but I fear that his illness is too
deeply rooted," was what he read. He laughed. The arched ceiling threw
back an echo, which made him jump up, as if he wanted to find out who
had laughed at him. Then, he stepped up to the window, and looked down
into the depth below. It was deep, far deeper than he had imagined, and
overcome by a sudden giddiness, he started back.
His eye now fell on the small phial which the old Thieto had given him.
With a painful recollection he thought of the blind old man! "Serving
women is an evil thing for him, who wishes to remain in the paths of
virtue," he had said when Ekkehard took leave.
He tore the seal off and poured the water from the Jordan over his head
and eyes. It was too late. Whole floods of holy water will not
extinguish the inward fire, unless one dives down, never to rise again
to the surface. Yet a momentary feeling of quiet came over him.
"I will pray to be delivered from temptation," said he. He threw
himself on his knees, but after a while he fancied that he heard the
pigeons swarming round his head, as they did on the day when he first
entered his chamber. Only they had mocking faces now, and had a
contemptuous look about their beaks.
He got up, and slowly descended the winding staircase to the
castle-chapel. The altar, which had often witnessed his former earnest
devotions, was a safer place for him, he thought. The chapel was as it
had always been, dark and silent. Six ponderous pillars with square
capitals adorned with leaf-work, supported the vault. A faint streak of
daylight fell in through the narrow window. The depth of the niche in
which the altar was placed, was but faintly illuminated; the golden
background of the mosaic picture of the Redeemer alone shone with a
soft glitter. Greek artists had transplanted the forms of their church
ornaments to the German rock. In white flowing garments, with a golden
red aureole round his head, the Saviour's lean figure stood there, with
the fingers of the right hand extended in the act of blessing.
Ekkehard knelt before the altar-steps; his forehead resting on the cold
stone flags. Thus he remained, wrapt in prayer. "Oh thou, that hast
taken the sins and sufferings of the whole world on thyself, send out
one ray of thy grace on me, unworthy object." He looked up with a fixed
stare as if he expected the earnest figure to step down, and hold out
his hand to him.
"I am here at thy feet, like Peter, surrounded by tempest, and the
waves will not bear me up! Save me, oh Lord! save me as thou didst him,
when thou walkedst over the raging billows, extending thy hand to him
and saying 'oh, thou of little faith, wherefore dost thou doubt?'"
But no such sign was given him.
Ekkehard's brain was giving way.
A rustling, like that of a woman's garments, now became audible, but
Ekkehard did not hear it.
Dame Hadwig had come down, impelled by a strange impulse. Since her
feelings for the monk had undergone a change, the image of her late
husband recurred oftener to her inward mind. This was but natural. As
the one receded into the background, the other must come forward again.
The latter reading of Virgil had also its share in this, as there had
been said so much about the memory of Sichaeus.
The following day was the anniversary of Sir Burkhard's death. With his
lance and shield by his side, the old duke lay buried in the chapel
below. His tomb was covered by a rough stone-slab. A sarcophagus of
grey sandstone stood near it, resting on small clumsy pillars, with
ionic headpieces, which again rested on quaint ugly stone-animals. This
stone coffin, Dame Hadwig had had made for herself. Every year, on the
anniversary of the Duke's death, she had it carried up, filled with
corn and fruits, which were distributed amongst the poor,--the means
for living coming from the resting-place of the dead. It was an old
pious custom.
To-day she intended to pray on her husband's grave. The reigning
twilight concealed Ekkehard's kneeling figure. She did not see him.
Suddenly she started up from her kneeling pasture. A laugh, soft yet
piercing struck her ear. She knew the voice well. Ekkehard had risen
and recited the following words of the psalms:
"Hide me under the shadow of thy wings. From the wicked that oppress
me, from my deadly enemies, who compass me about. Arise, o Lord,
disappoint them, cast them down." ...
He said it in an ominous tone. It was no more the voice of prayer.
Dame Hadwig bent down once more, beside the sarcophagus, on which she
would gladly have placed another, to hide her from Ekkehard's view. She
had no longer any wish to be alone with him. Her heart beat calmly now.
He went to the door, about to go, when suddenly he looked back once
more. The everlasting lamp was softly rocking to and fro, over Dame
Hadwig's head. Ekkehard's eye pierced the twilight this time, and with
one bound,--quicker than that which in later days St. Bernard had made,
when the madonna had beckoned to him, in the cathedral at Speier--he
stood before the Duchess. He cast a long and penetrating look at her.
Rising from the ground, and seizing the edge of the stone sarcophagus
with her right hand, she confronted him, whilst the everlasting lamp
over her head, was still gently swinging to and fro, on its silken
cord.
"Thrice blessed are the dead, for one prays for them," said Ekkehard,
interrupting the silence.
Dame Hadwig made no reply.
"Will you pray for me also, when I am dead?" continued he. "Oh no, you
must not pray for me! ... but you must let a goblet be made out of my
skull, and when you take another monk away from the monastery of St.
Gallus, you must offer him the welcome draught in it,--and give him my
greeting!--You can put your own lips to it also; it will not crack. But
you must then wear the head-band with the rose in it." ...
"Ekkehard!" said the Duchess, "you are trespassing!"
He put his right hand up to his forehead.
"Ah yes!" said he in a soft, mournful voice, "ah yes!... the Rhine is
trespassing also. They have stopped its course with gigantic rocks, but
it has gnawed them all through, and is now rushing and roaring onwards;
carrying everything before it, in its glorious newly won liberty!...
And God must be trespassing also methinks; for he has allowed the Rhine
to be, and the Hohentwiel and the Duchess of Suabia, and the tonsure on
my head."
The Duchess began to shiver. Such an outbreak of long repressed
feeling, she had not expected. But, it was too late,--her heart
remained untouched.
"You are ill," she said.
"Ill?" asked he, "it is merely a requital. More than a year ago, at
Whitsuntide, when there was as yet no Hohentwiel for me, I carried the
coffin of St. Gallus in solemn procession out of the cloister, and a
woman threw herself on the ground before me. 'Get up,' cried I, but she
remained prostrate in the dust. 'Walk over me with thy relic, oh
priest, so that I may recover,' cried she, and my foot stepped over
her. That woman suffered from the heartache. Now 'tis reversed." ...
Tears interrupted his voice. He could not go on. Then, he threw himself
at Dame Hadwig's feet, clasping the hem of her garment. His whole frame
was convulsed with trembling.
Dame Hadwig was touched; touched against her will; as if from the hem
of her garment, a feeling of unutterable woe thrilled her, up to her
very heart.
"Get up," said she, "and try to think of other things. You still owe us
a story. You will soon have conquered this weakness."
Then Ekkehard laughed through his tears.
"A story!" cried he, "yes, a story! But it must not be told. Come, let
us act the story! From the height of yonder tower one can see so far
into the distance, and so deep into the valley below,--so sweet and
deep, and tempting. What right has the ducal castle to hold us back?
Nobody who wishes to get down into the depth below, need count more
than three, ... and we should flutter and glide softly into the arms of
Death, awaiting us down there. Then, I should be no longer a monk, and
I might wind my arms around you,--and he who sleeps here in the ground
below," striking Sir Burkhard's tombstone with his clenched hand;
"shall not prevent me! If he, the old man should come, I would not let
you go, and we will float up to the tower again, and sit where we sat
before, and we will read the AEneid to the end, and you must wear the
rose under your head-band, as if nothing whatever had happened. The
gate we will keep well locked against the Duke, and we will laugh at
all evil backbiting tongues, and folks will say, when sitting at their
fire-places of a winter's evening: 'that is a pretty tale of the
faithful Ekkehard, who slew the Emperor Ermenrich for hanging the
Harlungen brothers, and who afterwards sat for many hundred years
before Dame Venus's mountain, with his white staff in his hands, and he
meant to sit there until the day of judgment, to warn off all pilgrims
coming to the mountain. But at last he grew tired of this, and ran away
and became a monk at St. Gall, and he fell down an abyss and was
killed, and he is sitting now beside a proud, pale woman, reading
Virgil to her. And at midnight may be heard the words: 'If thou
commandest, oh Queen, to renew the unspeakable sorrow.' 'And then she
must kiss him, whether she will or not, for death makes up for the
pleasures denied us in life.'"
He had uttered all this with a wild, wandering look in his face; and
now his voice failed with low weeping. Dame Hadwig had stood immovably
all this time. It was as if a gleam of pity were lighting up her cold
eye, as she now bent down her head towards him.
"Ekkehard," said she, "you must not speak of death. This is madness. We
both live, you and I!"
He did not stir. Then she lightly laid her hand on his burning
forehead. This touch sent a wild thrill through his brains. He sprang
up.
"You are right!" cried he. "We both live, you and I!"
A dizzy darkness clouded his eyes as he stepped forwards, and winding
his arms round her proud form, he fiercely pressed her to his bosom,
his kiss burning on her lip. Her resisting words died away, unheard.
Raising her high up towards the altar, as if she were an offering he
was about to make, he cried out to the dark and solemn looking picture,
"why dost thou hold out thy gold glittering fingers so quietly, instead
of blessing us?"
The Duchess had started like a wounded deer. One moment, and all
the passion of her hurt pride lent her strength, to push the frenzied
man back, and to free herself at least partly from his embrace. He
had still got one arm round her waist, when the church-door was
suddenly opened, and a flaring streak of daylight broke through the
darkness,--they were no longer alone.
Rudimann, the cellarer from the Reichenau, stepped over the threshold,
whilst other figures became visible in the background of the courtyard.
The Duchess had waxed pale with shame and anger. A tress of her long
dark hair had become loosened and was streaming down her back.
"I beg your pardon," said the man from the Reichenau, with grinning
politeness. "My eyes have beheld nothing."
Then, Dame Hadwig, ridding herself entirely from Ekkehard's hold, cried
out: "Yes, I say!--yes you _have_ seen a madman, who has forgotten
himself and God, ... I should be sorry for your eyes if they had beheld
nothing, for I would have had them torn out!"
It was with an indescribably cold hauteur, that she pronounced these
words.
Then Rudimann began to understand the strange scene.
"I had forgotten," said he in a cutting tone, "that the man who stands
there, is one of those, to whom wise men have applied the words of St.
Hieronymus, when he says, that their manners were more befitting
dandies and bridegrooms, than the elect of the Lord."
Ekkehard stood there, leaning against a pillar, with arms stretched out
in the air, like Odysseus when he wanted to embrace the shadow of his
mother. Rudimann's words roused him from his dreams.
"Who dares to come between her and me?" cried he threateningly. But
Rudimann, patting him on the shoulder with an insolent familiarity,
said: "Calm yourself, my good friend; we have only come to deliver a
note into your hands. St. Gallus can no longer allow the wisest of all
his disciples, to remain out in this shilly-shallying world. You are
called home!--And don't forget the stick with which you are wont to
illtreat your confraters, who like to snatch a kiss at vintage-time,
you chaste censor," he added in a low whisper.
Ekkehard stepped back. Wild longings, the pain of separation, burning
passionate love, and cutting, taunting words,--all these overwhelmed
him at once. He made a few steps towards the Duchess; but the chapel
was already filling. The Abbot of Reichenau had come himself to witness
Ekkehard's departure.
"It will be a difficult task, to get him away," he had said to the
cellarer. It was easy enough now. Monks and lay-brothers came in after
him.
"Sacrilege," Rudimann called out to them. "He has laid his wanton hand
on his mistress, even before the altar!"
Then Ekkehard could not restrain himself any longer. To have the most
sacred secret of his heart profaned by insolent coarseness,--a pearl
thrown before swine, ... he tore down the everlasting lamp, and swung
the heavy vessel over his head. The light went out, and the moment
after, a hollow groan was heard, and the cellarer lay with bleeding
head on the stone-flags. The lamp lay beside him. Then there followed a
fierce struggle, fighting, confusion ... all was coming to an end with
Ekkehard. They had got the better of him, and tearing off the cord
which served him as a belt, they tied his hands together.
There he stood, the handsome youthful figure; now the very picture of
woe, resembling the broken-winged eagle. His eyes sent one mournful,
troubled and appealing look at the Duchess,--who turned her head away.
"Do that which you think right," said she to the Abbot, sweeping
proudly through the ranks of the lookers on.
A cloud of smoke met her outside, whilst the voices of loud, noisy
merriment were heard from the castle-gate, outside of which a great
bonfire, made up of resinous pine-branches, was burning. The servants
of the castle danced around it, throwing flowers into the flames, and
at that moment, Audifax putting his arm round the companion of his
adventures, had jumped with her through the flames, uttering a loud cry
of delight.
"Where does all this smoke come from?" asked Dame Hadwig of Praxedis,
who was coming towards her.
"Solstice! Midsummer-day!" said the Greek maid.
* * *
It was a dreary, uncomfortable evening. The Duchess had locked herself
up in her bed-room, refusing admittance to everyone.
Ekkehard meanwhile, had been dragged into a dungeon, by the order of
the Abbot. In the same tower, in the airy upper storey of which was his
chamber, there was a damp, dark vault, the floor of which had fragments
of old tombstones lying about; they had been brought there, when the
castle-chapel had been renovated. A bundle of straw had been thrown in
for him, and a monk was sitting outside to guard the entrance.
Burkhard, the cloister-pupil, ran up and down, wailing and wringing his
hands. He could not understand the fate which had befallen his uncle.
The servants were all putting their heads together, eagerly whispering,
and gossiping, as if the hundred-tongued Rumour had been sitting on the
roof, spreading her falsehoods about. "He tried to murder the Duchess,"
said one. "He has practised the Devil's own arts, with that big book of
his," said another. "To-day is St. John's day, when the Devil has no
power, and so he could not help him."
At the well in the courtyard, Rudimann the cellarer was standing,
letting the clear water flow over his head. Ekkehard had given him a
sharp cut, out of which the dark blood was slowly trickling down into
the water.
Whilst he was thus occupied, Praxedis came down, looking pale and
depressed. She was the only being who had sincere, heartfelt pity, for
the prisoner. On seeing the cellarer, she ran into the garden, tore up
a blue cornflower with the roots, and then bringing it to him, said:
"Take that into your right hand until it gets warm, and then the
bleeding will cease. Or, shall I fetch you some linen to dress the
wound?"
The cellarer shook his head.
"It will stop, in its own time," said he. '"Tis not the first time that
I have been bled. Keep your cornflowers for yourself."
But Praxedis was anxious to conciliate Ekkehard's enemy. So she fetched
some linen, upon which he allowed his wound to be dressed, without
however, offering any thanks for it.
"Are you not going to let Ekkehard out to-day?" asked she.
"To-day?" Rudimann repeated sneeringly. "Do you feel inclined to weave
a garland for the standard-bearer of Antichrist? the leading horse of
Satan's car, whom you have petted and spoiled up here, as if he were
the darling son Benjamin himself? Today indeed! When a month is passed
you may put the question again, over there," pointing towards the
Helvetian mountains.
Praxedis was frightened. "What then do you intend to do with him?"
"That which is right," replied Rudimann with an evil laugh.
"Wantonness, deeds of violence, disobedience, haughtiness, sacrilege,
blasphemy,--there are scarcely names enough for all his nefarious acts;
but thank God, there are yet means for their expiation!" He made a
motion with his hand like that of flogging.--"Ah yes, plenty of means
of expiation, gentle mistress! We are going to write the catalogue of
his sins on his back."
"Have pity," said Praxedis, "for he is a sick man."
"For that very reason we are going to cure him. When he has been tied
to the pillar for an hour or so, and half a dozen rods have been
flogged to pieces on his bleeding back, then all his spleen and his
devilries will vanish!"
"For God's sake!" exclaimed the terrified girl.
"Calm yourself, for that is not all. A stray lamb must be delivered up
to the fold it belongs to. There, he will find good shepherds who will
look after the rest. Sheep-shearing sweet mistress, sheep-shearing!
Then they will cut off the hair of his head, which will make it a deal
cooler; and if you feel inclined to undertake a pilgrimage to St. Gall,
in a year hence, you will see on Sundays and holidays, somebody
standing barefooted before the church-door, and his head will be as
bare as a cornfield after harvest-time, and the penitential garb will
become him very nicely. What do you think? The Heathenish goings on
with Virgil are at an end now."
"He is innocent!" said Praxedis.
"Oh," said the cellarer sneeringly, "we shall never harm innocence! He
need only prove himself so by God's ordeal. If he takes the ring out of
the kettle of boiling water with unburnt arm, our Abbot himself will
give him the blessing; and I will say that it was all a delusion of the
Devil's own making, when my eyes beheld the lady Duchess, clasped in
the arms of his holiness, brother Ekkehard."
Praxedis wept. "Dear, venerable Master Rudimann!" said she imploringly.
Throwing an ugly leer at the Greek maiden, he said with pinched lips:
"So it will be. I might however perhaps be induced to interfere on his
behalf, if ..."
"If?" asked Praxedis eagerly.
"If you would be pleased to leave your chamber-door open to-night, so
that I could communicate the result of my endeavours to you."
Playfully drawing the ample folds of his habit together, so that the
outlines of his tightly laced waist became visible, he assumed a
complacent and expectant attitude. Praxedis stepped back, and stamped
her foot on the blue cornflower.
"You are a bad, wicked man!" she cried turning her back on him.
Rudimann, who knew how to interprete physiognomy, clearly saw from the
twitching of Praxedis's eyelids, and the angry frown on her forehead,
that her chamber-door would be locked, now and ever, against all the
cellarers in Christendom.
She went away. "Have you still any commands?" asked she, once more
looking back.
"Yes, thou Greek wasp! A jug of vinegar if you please. I want to lay my
rods in it; the writing is easier then, and will not fade away so soon.
I have as yet never had the good fortune to flog an interpreter of
Virgil. Such a scholar verily deserves particular attention."
Burkhard, the cloister-pupil, was still sitting under the linden-tree,
sobbing. Praxedis, in passing gave him a kiss, chiefly to spite the
cellarer. She went up to the Duchess, intending to implore her
compassion for Ekkehard on her knees; but the door remained locked
against her. Dame Hadwig was deeply hurt. If the monks of the Reichenau
had not come in upon them, she might have pardoned Ekkehard's frenzy;
all the more as she herself had sowed the seeds of all this,--but now
it had become a public scandal, which demanded punishment. The fear of
gossiping tongues, does influence many an action.
The Abbot had sent her the letter from St. Gall. "St. Benedict's
rules," so the letter said, "exacted not only the outward forms of a
monastic life, but the self-denial of heart and soul, which forms the
spirit of it!" Ekkehard was to return. From Gunzo's libel, some parts
were quoted against him.
It was all perfectly indifferent to the Duchess. What his fate would
be, if delivered into the hands of his antagonists, she knew quite
well. Yet she was determined to do nothing for him. Praxedis knocked at
her door a second time, but again it was not opened.
"Oh thou poor moth," said she sadly.
Ekkehard meanwhile, lay in his dungeon like one who had dreamt some
wild dream. Four bare walls surrounded him; some faint gleams of light
falling in from above. Now and then, he shivered as with cold. By
degrees a melancholy smile of resignation settled on his lips, but this
did not always remain there; bursts of anger, which made him clench his
fists, interrupted it.
It is the same with the human mind as with the sea. Though the tempest
may have blown over, the surge is yet stronger and more impetuous than
before, and now and then, some mighty straggling wave dashes wildly up,
frightening the seagulls away from the rocks.
But Ekkehard's heart was not yet broken. It was still too young for
that. He began to reflect on his position. The view into the future was
not very cheering. He well knew the rules of his order, and that the
men from Reichenau were his enemies.
With big strides he paced up and down the narrow space. "Great God,
whom we may invoke in the hour of affliction, how will this all end?"
He shut his eyes, and threw himself on the bundle of straw. Confused
visions passed before his soul. Thus he saw with his inward eye, how
they dragged him out in the early morning. The Abbot would be sitting
on his high stone chair, with the hooked staff in his hand, in sign of
his sitting in judgment, and then they would read out a long bill of
complaints against him, ... all this in the same courtyard in which he
had once sprung out of the sedan chair, with such a jubilant heart, and
in which he had preached his sermon against the Huns, on that solemn
Good-Friday,--and now they were all against him!
"What shall I do?" thought he. "With my hand on my heart, and my eyes
raised towards Heaven, I shall say: 'Ekkehard is not guilty!' Then the
judges will say, 'prove it!'" The big kettle is fetched; the fire
lighted beneath, so that the water hisses and bubbles. Then, the Abbot
draws off the golden ring from his finger. They push up the right
sleeve of his habit, whilst solemn penitential psalms are chaunted
around them. "I conjure thee, spirit of the water, that the Devil quit
thee, and that thou serve the Lord, to make known the truth, like to
the fiery furnace of the King of Babylon, when he had the three men
thrown into it!"--Thus the Abbot would address the boiling water; and
"dip in thy arm, and fetch the ring," says he to the accused....
"Just God, how will thy ordeal speak?" Wild doubts were besetting
Ekkehard's soul. He believed in himself and his good cause, but his
faith was less strong in the dreadful means, by which priestcraft and
church-laws sought to arrive at God's decision.
In the library of his monastery there was a little book, bearing the
title: "Against the inveterate error of the belief, that through fire,
water or single combat, the truth of God's judgment could be revealed."
This book he had once read, and he remembered it well. It was to prove,
that with these ordeals, which were an inheritance from the ancient
Heathen time, it was as the excellent Godfrey of Strassburg has
expressed it in later days, namely "that the best Christian, is as
combustible as an old rag."
"And what, if no miracle is performed?"
His thoughts were inclined to dark and despondent doubts.--"With burnt
arm, to be proclaimed guilty and to be flogged,--whilst _she_ perhaps
would stand on the balcony looking on, as if it were being done to an
entire stranger.--Oh Lord of Heaven and Earth send down Thy lightning!"
Yet hope does not entirely forsake even the most miserable. Then, he
fancied again how through all this shame and misery, a piercing "stop!"
was heard, and how she flew down with dishevelled locks, and in her
rustling ducal mantle drove his tormentors away, as the Saviour drove
out the usurers from the temple. And then, when all were gone, she
presents him both her hand and lips to receive the kiss of
reconciliation.--Long and ardently his phantasy dwelt on that beautiful
possibility, which filled his heart with a soft consolation, and he
spoke with the words of the Preacher: "As gold is purified from dross
in the fire, so the heart of man is purified by sorrow."
He now heard a slight noise in the antichamber of his dungeon. A stone
jug was put down. "You are to drink like a man," said a voice to the
lay-brother on guard, "for on St. John's night, all sorts of unearthly
visitors people the air and pass over our castle. So you must take care
to strengthen your courage. There's another jug set ready, when this is
finished."
It was Praxedis who had brought the wine. Ekkehard did not understand
what she wanted. "Then she also is false," thought he. "God protect
me!"
He closed his eyes and soon fell asleep. Some hours later he awoke. The
wine had evidently been to the lay-brother's taste, for he was lustily
singing a song in praise of the four goldsmiths, who had refused the
making of heathenish idols at Rome; for which they had suffered
martyrdom. With his heavy sandal-clad foot, he kept beating time on the
stone-flags. Ekkehard heard that another jug of wine was brought in.
The singing became always louder and more uproarious. Then he held a
soliloquy; in which he spoke much about Italy and good fare, and _Santa
Agnese fuori i muri_, until he suddenly ceased talking, whilst his
snoring could be heard very plainly through the stone walls.
Everything was silent around. It was about midnight. Ekkehard lay in a
half-slumbering state, when he heard the bolts of the door softly
withdrawn. He remained lying where he was. A muffled figure came in,
and a soft little hand was laid on the slumberer's forehead. He jumped
up.
"Hush!" whispered Praxedis, for it was she.
When everybody had gone to rest, Praxedis had kept awake. "The bad
cellarer shall not have the satisfaction of punishing our poor
melancholy teacher," she had said to herself; and woman's cunning
always finds some way and means to accomplish its schemes. Wrapping
herself up in a grey cloak, she had stolen down on tip-toe. No special
artifices were necessary, for the lay-brother was sleeping the sleep of
the just. If it had been otherwise, the Greek would have frightened him
by some ghost-trickery. That would have been her plan.
"You must fly!" said she to Ekkehard. "They mean to do their worst to
you."
"I know it," replied he sadly.
"Come then."
He shook his head. "I prefer to submit and to suffer," said he.
"Don't be a fool," whispered Praxedis. "First you built your castle on
the glittering rain-bow, and now that it has all tumbled down, you will
allow them to illtreat you, into the bargain? As if _they_ had a right
to drag you away and to flog you! And you will let them have the
pleasure of witnessing your humiliation?... it would be a nice
spectacle for them, to be sure! 'One does not see an honest man hung
every day,' said a man to me once in Constantinople, when I asked him
why he was running."
"Where should I go to?" asked Ekkehard.
"Neither to the Reichenau, nor to your monastery," said Praxedis.
"There is still many a hiding-place left in this world." She was
getting impatient, and seizing Ekkehard by the hand, she dragged him
on. "Forwards!" whispered she. He allowed himself to be led.
They slunk past the sleeping watchman; and now they stood in the
courtyard, where the fountain was splashing merrily. Ekkehard bent over
the spout, and took a long draught of the cool water.
"All is over now," said he. "And now away!"
It was a stormy night. "As the bridge is drawn up, you cannot go out by
the doorway;" said Praxedis, "but you can get down between the rocks,
on the eastern side. Our shepherd-boy has tried that path before."
They entered the little garden. A gust of wind was rocking the branches
of the maple-tree, to and fro. Ekkehard felt as if he were in a dream.
He mounted the battlement. Steep and rugged the grey rocks sloped into
the valley, that now looked like a dark yawning abyss. Black clouds
were chasing each other, along the dusky sky; weird uncouth shapes,
resembling two bears pursuing a winged dragon. After a while, the
fantastic forms united into one shapeless mass, which the wind drifted
onwards towards the Bodensee, that glittered faintly in the distance.
The whole landscape could only be seen in indistinct outlines.
"Blessings on your way," said Praxedis.
Ekkehard sat perfectly motionless on the battlement, still holding the
Greek maiden's hand clasped in his. His lips could not express the
feelings of gratitude which pervaded his whole being. Suddenly he felt
her cheek pressed against his, and a trembling kiss imprinted on his
forehead, followed by a pearly tear. Softly, Praxedis then drew away
her hand.
"Don't forget," said she, "that you still owe us a story. May God lead
your steps back again to this place, some day, so that we may hear it
from your own lips."
Ekkehard now let himself down. Waving one last farewell with his hand,
he soon disappeared from her sight. The stillness of night was
interrupted by a loud clatter and booming amongst the cliffs. A piece
of rock had become loosened, and fell noisily down into the valley.
Another followed somewhat slower, and on this Ekkehard was sitting;
guiding it as a rider does his horse. So he went down the sloping
precipice, through the black night,--farewell!
She crossed herself, and went back, smiling through her tears. The
lay-brother was still fast asleep. Whilst crossing the courtyard,
Praxedis spied a basket filled with ashes, which she seized, and softly
stealing back into Ekkehard's dungeon, she poured out its contents in
the middle of the room, as if this were all that were left of the
prisoner's earthly remains.
"Why dost thou snore so heavily, most reverend brother?" said she
hurrying away.