Ekkehard Volume Ii Part 12

"Have you brought home a considerable smart-money, Sir chamberlain?"

asked Praxedis.

"Smart-money? for whom?" stolidly said Master Spazzo.

"For poor Cappan! Why, I verily believe that you have eaten a handful of poppy-seed, not to know any more, for what purpose you rode out."

"Poppy-seed?" said Master Spazzo in the same drowsy tone. "Poppy-seed?

No. But wine of Meersburg, red wine of Meersburg, unmeasured quant.i.ties of red Meersburg, yes!"

Heavily he dismounted, and then retired into the privacy of his apartments. The report about the result of his mission, was not given.

Praxedis cast an astonished look at the departing chamberlain, as she did not wholly understand the reason of Master Spazzo's peculiar frame of mind.

"Have you never heard, that to a grown-up man, neither springs, woods, nor singing of birds are half so refreshing as old wine?" said Ekkehard, smilingly. "But even as the Jewish prophet boy said to King Darius, when his generals and officers were quarrelling around his throne, about which of them was the strongest: 'The wine is the strongest of all! for it conquers the men who drink it, and leads their minds astray.'"

Praxedis had approached the wall, and was looking downward.

"Do look, you radiant star of science," she now said to Ekkehard, "who may that dainty ecclesiastical little man be, who is coming up here?"

Ekkehard bent over the wall and looked down the steep rocky hill-side.

Between the hazel-bushes, bordering the footpath that led up to the castle, walked a boy with wavy brown locks, wearing a monk's habit, coming down to his ankles; sandals on his naked feet, a leathern knapsack on his back, and carrying a staff with an iron point, in his hand. Ekkehard did not recognise him as yet.

After a few minutes he reached the castle-gate. There he turned round, and shading his eyes with his hand, he gazed over the wide beautiful landscape, stretching out before him. Then he entered the courtyard and approached Ekkehard with measured steps. It was Burkhard the cloister-pupil; the son of Ekkehard's sister, who had come over from Constance, to pay a holiday visit to his youthful uncle.

He made a solemn face, and p.r.o.nounced his greeting as if he had learned it by heart.

Ekkehard embraced the well-behaved boy, who in all the fifteen years of his life had never done a downright foolish thing. Burkhard was the bearer of sundry kind messages from St. Gall, as well as of an epistle of Master Ratpert, who, being busy just then with some translation, asked Ekkehard's advice, in what style and measure he was wont to translate certain difficult pa.s.sages in Virgil. "Hail, prosperity and progress in knowledge," was the letter's parting salutation.

Ekkehard at once began to question his nephew about all the brothers, but Praxedis soon interrupted him.

"Please to let the pious youngster rest himself first. A parched tongue, is not adapted for speech. Come with me, my little man, thou shalt be a more welcome visitor, than the wicked Rudimann from the Reichenau!"

"Father Rudimann?" exclaimed the boy. "Him I know also."

"How did you get to know him?" asked Ekkehard.

"He paid us a visit but a few days since, and brought a big letter to the Abbot, as well as a treatise, which they say contains a great deal about yourself, beloved uncle, and is not much in your praise."

"Hear, hear!" said Praxedis.

"And when he had taken leave, he only went as far as the church, where he prayed till night-fall. Now he must have known every nook and corner in the monastery, for when the sleeping-bell sounded, he slunk on tiptoe to the great dormitory, there to listen to what the brothers might say about you and the contents of the treatise. The night-lamp burnt but dimly, so that he could crouch down unseen in a dark corner.

But at midnight, Father Notker Peppercorn, came to make the round and to inspect whether everyone had fastened his girdle tidily round his garment, and whether no knife or other dangerous weapon was perchance in the bedroom. _He_ drew out the stranger from his hiding-place; and the brothers woke up, and the big lanthorn was lighted, and then they all rushed on him, armed with sticks and scourges from the scourging-room, and there was a tremendous noise and uproar, although the Abbot and Dean tried to quiet them. Notker Peppercorn was also highly indignant: 'The devil goes about in disguise, trying whom he may devour,' cried he, 'but we have caught the devil, and will scourge him!'

"But Father Rudimann in spite of all, was yet inclined to be saucy: 'I declare ye excellent youths,' said he, 'if I knew where the carpenter had left some outlet, I should creep away on my hands and feet; but now, when chance has delivered me into your hands, mind that you do not heap insults on the head of your guest!' Then they all got quite furious, and dragged him out into the scourging-room, where he had to go down on his knees to escape scot-free; and when finally the Abbot said: 'We will let the fox go home to his den,' he expressed his thanks in very polite terms.

"On my way, yesterday, I met a cart laden with two big wine-tuns, which the driver told me were a present from the cellarer of the Reichenau, for the friendly reception he had met with, at St. Gall."

"Of all this, Master Rudimann did not breathe a word, when he called on us yesterday," said Praxedis. "For that recital, thou verily deservest a piece of cake, my darling boy. Thou canst tell a story as well as any older person."

"Oh," said the cloister-pupil half offended, "that's nothing! But I am going to write a poem about it, ent.i.tled, 'the wolf's invasion of the sheep-fold, and subsequent punishment.' I have already got it half ready in my head. That will be fine!"

"Dost thou also make poems, my young nephew?" gaily said Ekkehard.

"That would be a nice cloister-pupil indeed, who with fourteen years could make no poem!" was the boy's reply. "My hymn in praise of the Archangel Michael, with double-rhymed hexametres, I was permitted to read out to the Abbot, who was pleased to call my verses, 'a glittering string of pearls.' And then my Sapphic ode, in honour of the pious Wiborad is likewise very pretty. Shall I recite it to you!"

"For G.o.d's sake!" cried Praxedis. "Dost thou think that one merely drops down into our courtyard to begin at once reciting odes? Thou hadst better eat thy cake first."

She ran off to the kitchen, leaving Ekkehard's learned nephew under the linden-tree, to talk with his uncle. He profited by the opportunity to speak a good deal about the _trivium_ and _quadrivium_, and as the Hohentwiel just then threw a delicately drawn shadow on the plain below, the cloister-pupil indulged in a prolix discussion about the cause of all shadows, which he p.r.o.nounced with great a.s.surance to spring from a compact body standing in the way of light; proving afterwards the vanity of all other definitions.

Like the waters from a fountain, did the scientific flood stream forth from the youthful lips. In astronomy also he was quite at home, and his uncle had to listen patiently to the praise of Zoroaster, and King Ptolemaeus of Egypt. Further he had to undergo a strict examination himself, about the shape and application of the astrolabe, and finally the curly-headed nephew began to demonstrate how absurd was the opinion of those, who believed that on the other side of the globe lived the honourable race of the antipodes!

All these fine things he had learned only five days ago,--but at last his uncle did what the brave Emperor Otto did, when the famous Bishop of Rheims, and Otrich the cathedral-schoolmaster of Magdeburg and hundreds of learned abbots and scholars, held their great contest about the basis and cla.s.sification of theoretical philosophy, before him,--namely he yawned. At that critical moment, Praxedis reappeared with a delicious cherry-tart and a basket filled with various fruits, and these good things speedily gave a more natural turn to the thoughts of the fifteen-years-old philosopher. Like a well-educated boy, he first said grace before eating, as was customary in the monastery, and then he turned his attentions to the annihilation of the cherry-tart, leaving the question of the antipodes to some future time.

Praxedis now turned to Ekkehard. "The d.u.c.h.ess bids me tell you," she said with mock earnestness, "that she feels inclined to return to the study of Virgil. She is anxious to learn the final fate of Queen Dido,--and so we are to begin again this very evening. Remember that you are to wear a more cheerful expression than the present one," added she in a lower key, "as it is a delicate attention, in order to show you that in spite of a certain treatise, her confidence in your learning has not been destroyed."

This was a fact; but Ekkehard received the news with a start of terror.

To be again together with the two women as he used to be,--the mere thought was painful. He had not yet learnt to forget a certain Good Friday morning.

He now slapped his nephew on the shoulder, so as to make him start, and said: "Thou hast not come here to spend thy holidays merely with fishing and bird-catching, Burkhard. This afternoon we will read Virgil with the gracious d.u.c.h.ess, and thou shalt be present also."

He thought to place the boy like a shield between the d.u.c.h.ess and his thoughts.

"Very well," replied Burkhard, with cherry-dyed lips. "I prefer Virgil a great deal to hunting and riding, and I shall request the Lady d.u.c.h.ess to teach me some Greek. After that visit when they took you away with them, the cloister-pupils often said, that she knew more Greek than all the venerable fathers of the monastery, put together.

They say that she learnt it by sorcery. And although I am the first in Greek ..."

"Then you will certainly be Abbot in five years, and in twenty, holy father at Rome," said Praxedis mockingly. "Meanwhile you would do well to wash your blue lips in yonder spring."

At the fourth hour of the evening, Ekkehard was waiting in the pillared hall below, ready to resume his reading of the aeneid. More than six months had gone by, during which Virgil had been laid aside. Ekkehard felt oppressed. He opened one of the windows through which the pleasant cool air of evening came streaming in.

The cloister-pupil was turning over the leaves of the Latin ma.n.u.script.

"When the d.u.c.h.ess speaks to thee, mind to be very polite," said Ekkehard. But he replied with a complacent air: "with such a grand lady, I shall only speak in verse. She shall see that a pupil from the inner school stands before her."

Here, the d.u.c.h.ess entered, followed by Praxedis. She greeted Ekkehard with a slight bend of the head. Without appearing to notice the boy, she sat down in her richly carved arm-chair. Burkhard had made her a graceful bow, from the lower end of the table, where he stood.

Ekkehard opened the book, when the d.u.c.h.ess said indifferently: "Why is that boy here?"

"He is but a humble auditor," said Ekkehard, "who, inspired by the wish to learn the Greek language, ventures to approach such a n.o.ble teacher.

He would be very happy, if from your lips he could learn ..."

But before Ekkehard had ended his speech, Burkhard had approached the d.u.c.h.ess. With eyes cast down, and a mixture of shyness and confidence, he said with a clear intonation of the rhythm:

"Esse velim Graecus, c.u.m vix sim, dom'na[1], Latinus."

It was a faultless hexametre.