CHAPTER XXII.
[On the Wildkirchlein.]
And now, much beloved reader, we must bid thee to gird thy loins, take thy staff in hand, and follow us up into the mountains. From the lowlands of the Bodensee, our tale now takes us over to the Helvetian Alps. There, the Säntis stretches out grandly into the blue air,--when he does not prefer to don his cloud-cap,--smilingly looking down into the depths below, where the towns of men, shrivel up to the size of ant-hills. All around him, there is a company of fine, stalwart fellows, made of the same metal, and there, they put their bold heads together, and jestingly blow misty veils into each other's faces. Over their glaciers and ravines, a mighty roaring and rustling is heard at times; and that, which they whispered to each other, respecting the ways and doings of mankind, had already a somewhat contemptuous tinge, a thousand years ago,--and since then, it has not become much better I fear.
About ten days after the monks of the Reichenau had found nothing but a heap of ashes instead of their prisoner, in the castle-dungeon, and had debated a good deal, whether the Devil had burnt him up at midnight, or whether he had escaped,--a man was walking up the hills, along the white foaming Sitter, over luxuriant meadow-lands, interspersed with rocks.
He wore a mantle made of wolves' skins over his monkish garb; a leathern pouch at his side, and he carried a spear in his right hand. Often, he pushed the iron point into the ground, and leaned on the butt end, using the weapon thus, as a mountain-stick.
Round about, there was perfect silence and solitude. Long stretches of mist were hovering over the wild valley, where the Sitter comes out of the Seealpsee; whilst at the side, a towering wall of rocks, fringed by scanty green plants, rose up towards heaven.
The mountain glens, which in the present days, are inhabited by a merry and numerous race of herdsmen, were then but scantily peopled. Only the cell of the Abbot of St. Gall stood there in the valley; surrounded by a few small, humble cottages.
After the bloody battle of Zulpich, a handful of liberty-loving Allemannic men, who could not learn to bend their necks to the Franconian yoke had settled down in that wilderness. Their descendants were still living there, in scattered, shingle-covered houses, and in summer they drove their herds up into the Alps. They were a race of strong and healthy mountaineers, who, untouched by the goings on in the world at large, enjoyed a simple free life, which they bequeathed to the following generations.
The path which was followed by our traveller, became steeper and rougher. He now stood before a steep overhanging wall of rocks. A heavy drop of water had fallen on his head from above; upon which he cast up a searching look, to see whether the grim canopy of stones, would yet delay falling down, till he had passed by. Rocky walls, however, luckily can remain longer in an oblique position, than any structure made by human hands; so nothing fell down, but a second drop.
Leaning with his left hand on the stone wall, the man continued his way, which, however, became narrower with every step he took. The dark precipice at his side came nearer and nearer; a giddy depth yawning up at him, ... and now all trace of a pathway ceased altogether. Two mighty pine-trunks were laid over the abyss, serving as a bridge.
"It must be done," said the man, boldly stepping over it. Heaving a deep sigh of relief, when his feet touched ground again on the other side, he turned round to inspect the dangerous passage, somewhat more at his leisure.
It was a narrow promontory, above and below which there was a steep, yellowish grey wall of rocks. In the depth below, scarcely visible, was the mountain-brook Sitter, like a silver band in the green valley, whilst the seagreen mirror of the Seealpsee, seemed to hide itself shyly between the dark fir-trees. Opposite, in their armour of ice and snow, there rose the host of mountain-giants; and the pen feels a shudder of delight pass through it, when called upon to write down their names. The long stretched bewildering Kamor; the tremendous walls of the Boghartenfirst; the Sigelsalp and Maarwiese, on whose battlements grows a luxurious vegetation, like moss on the roofs of old houses. Then, the mysterious keeper of the secret of the lake, the "old man," with his deeply furrowed stone-forehead, and hoary head,--the chancellor and bosom-friend of the mighty Säntis.
"Ye mountains and vales, praise the Lords!" exclaimed the wanderer, overwhelmed by the grandeur of the spectacle before him. Many hundreds of mountain-swallows fluttered out of the crevices between the rocks. Their appearance was like a good omen for the lonely traveller.
He made some steps onwards. There, the wall of rocks had many a fissure, and he saw a twofold cavern. A simple cross, made of rudely carved wood, stood beside it. Stems of fir-trees, heaped up on one side, and interlaced with branches of the same, in the manner of a blockhouse, bore witness to its being a human habitation. Not a sound interrupted the stillness around.
The stranger knelt down before the cross, and prayed there a long while.
It was Ekkehard,--and the place where he knelt, was the "Wildkirchlein."
He had reached the valley in safety on his stone horse, after Praxedis had freed him. The next morning found him weary and exhausted at the door of old Moengal, at Radolfszell.
"Oh, that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of wayfaring men; that I might leave my people and go from them!" said he in the words of the prophet, after he had told the parish-priest all that had happened to him.
Then, the old man pointed over towards the Säntis. "Thou art right," said Moengal. "The holy Gallus did the same. 'Into the wilderness will I go, and there shall I wait for Him, who will restore my soul's health.' Perhaps he would never have become a saint, if he had thought and acted differently. Try to conquer thy grief. When the eagle feels sick, and his eyes grow dim, then he rises heavenwards, as far as his wings will carry him. The nearness of the sun gives a new youth. Do thou the same. I know a bonny nook for thee to recover thy health in."
He then described the road to Ekkehard.
"Thou wilt find a man up there," continued he, "who has not seen much of the world for the last twenty years. His name is Gottshalk. Give him my greeting, and let us hope that God has forgiven him his trespasses."
The parish-priest did not say for what sin his old friend was doing penance up there. He had once been sent to Italy, when times were bad, to buy corn. When he came to Verona, he was well received by the quarrelsome bishop Ratherius, and he held his devotions in the venerable cathedral, where the remains of St. Anastasia lay unlocked in a golden shrine; and the church was deserted, and the Devil tempted Gottshalk to take a keepsake to Germany. So, he took as much of the saint's body as he could carry away under his habit; an arm, a foot and some spine-bones, and secretly departed with his spoil. But from that hour he had lost his inward peace. By day and night, the saint appeared to him in her torn and mutilated condition; walking with crutches and demanding back her arm and her foot. Over mountains and Alpine glens she followed him, and threateningly approached him even on the threshold of his own cloister. Then he threw away the stolen limbs, and fled half maddened to the heights of the Säntis; there, to expiate his heavy sin in the hermit's cell which he erected for himself.
For two days old Moengal secreted his young friend in his cell, and then he rowed him across the lake during the night-time. "Don't go back to thy convent," said he when they were about to part company, "lest their tittle-tattle should be the ruin of thee. Jeers and derision are worse than punishment. 'Tis true that thou deservest some lecturing; but that must be done for thee, by the fresh mountain-breezes, which are better entitled to set thee right again, than thy fellow-monks."
A spear and a wolf's skin were his parting gifts to Ekkehard.
Shyly and stealthily he continued his journey at night-time, and it was with bitterness of heart that like a stranger he passed his monastery, which still bore visible traces of the ravages of the Huns. Some windows were lighted up, and seemed to beckon to him; but he only hurried onwards the quicker. The Abbot's cell in the mountains, he also passed by, without entering. He did not wish to be recognized by anyone belonging to the monastery.
... His prayers were ended now. Wistfully he gazed at the entrance of the cavern, waiting for Gottshalk the hermit's coming out to welcome the visitor. But nobody appeared; the cavern was empty.
Sancta Anastasia ignosce raptori! Holy Anastasia, pardon thy ravisher! was written with juice from Alpine herbs on the bright-coloured rock. A stone trough caught up the water which came trickling through the crevices. It was so full that the water ran over.
Ekkehard entered the cell. Some earthen dishes stood beside an old stone-flag, which probably had served as a hearth. In a corner there lay a coarse fishing-net, as well as a hammer and spade; a rusty hatchet and a quantity of cut pine-logs.
On some wooden boards was a sort of couch, consisting of straw and dry leaves, which looked rotten and decayed. Two rats, frightened by Ekkehard's entrance, ran to hide in a crevice.
"Gottshalk," cried Ekkehard, using his hand like a speaking-trumpet. Then he uttered a sort of shout; such as is customary amongst the mountaineers in those parts; but nobody answered. In a jug, the milk it had once contained, had become a crusty substance. Mournfully Ekkehard stepped out again on the narrow strip of ground, which separated the cavern from the precipice.
Gazing over to the left, he could see a small bit of the blue Bodensee, coming out behind the mountains. All the magnificence of the Alpine world, however, could not banish a feeling of unutterable woe from his heart. Alone and God-forsaken he stood there on the solitary height. He strained his faculty of hearing to the utmost, in the hope of catching the sound of a human voice, but the low and monotonous moaning of the wind in the pine-wood below, was all that he heard.
His eyes became moist.
It was getting late. What now?... The cravings of hunger, drew off his attention for the moment. He still had provisions for three days with him. So he sat down before the cavern and took his evening meal; moistening his bread with the tears he could not restrain.
His mountain threw long, purple shadows on the opposite rocks, whose peaks only were still glowing in the sunshine.
"As long as the cross stands on yonder rock, I shall not be entirely forsaken," said he. He then collected some grass that grew outside and prepared himself a new couch, in the place of the old one. The cool evening air began to be felt. So he wrapped himself up in Moengal's mantle and lay down. Sleep is the best cure for the sufferings of youth, and in spite of heartache and loneliness, it soon closed Ekkehard's eyelids.
The first dawn of morning rose over the head of the Kamor, and only the morning-star was still shining brightly, when Ekkehard started up from his slumbers. It was as if he had heard the merry tones of a herdsman's shout, and on looking up, he saw a light shining out from the darkest recess of the cavern. He believed himself to be under the delusion of a dream; that he was still in his dungeon and that Praxedis was coming to free him. But the light came nearer and proved to be a torch of pine-wood. A young girl, with high looped-up petticoats, was carrying this primitive candle. He jumped up. Without showing either fear or surprise, she stood before him, and said: "God's welcome to you."
It was a bold, half wild looking maiden, with olive complexion and fiery sparkling eyes. Her dark abundant tresses were fastened behind by a massive silver pin, in the shape of a spoon. The braided basket on her back, and the Alpine stick in her right hand, marked her as being an inhabitant of the mountains.
"Holy Gallus, protect me from new temptation," thought Ekkehard; but she called out cheerfully. "Again I say, be welcome! My father will be very glad to hear that we have got a new mountain-brother. One can well see by the little milk which the cows give, that the old Gottshalk is dead,--he has said many a time."
It did not sound like the voice of a female demon.
Ekkehard was still sleepy and yawned.
"May God reward you!" ejaculated the maid.
"Why did you say, may God reward you?" asked he.
"Because you have not swallowed me up," laughed she, and before he could put any more queries, she ran away with her torch-light, and disappeared in the back of the cavern.
Presently she returned, however; followed by a grey-bearded herdsman, wrapped in a mantle made of lambs' skins.
"Father will not believe it!" cried she.
The herdsman now took a deliberate survey of Ekkehard. He was a hale and hardy man; who in the days of his youth, could threw a stone of a hundred weight above twenty paces, without losing an inch of his ground. His tanned face and his bare sinewy arms, were signs of his not yet having lost much of his strength.
"So you are going to be our new mountain-brother?" said he, good-naturedly extending his hand. "Well, that's right!"
"Ekkehard was a little embarrassed at the strangeness of the apparition.
"I intended to pay a visit to Brother Gottshalk," said he.
"Zounds! there you are too late," said the herdsman. "He lost his life last autumn. 'Twas a grievous affair. Look there!"--pointing to a wall of rocks in the depth below--"on yonder slope he went to gather dry leaves; I was there myself to help him. Suddenly, he started up, as if he had been bitten by a snake, and pointing over at the Hohenkasten, he cried: 'holy Anastasia, thou art made whole again, and standest on both feet, and beckonest to me with both thy arms!' ... and down he jumped, as if there had been no abyss between the rock he stood on and the Hohenkasten. With a 'kyrie eleison!' he went down into the frightful depth.--May God be merciful to his soul! It was only this spring that we found the body, wedged in between the rocks; and the vultures had carried off one arm and one leg, nobody knows whereto."
"Don't frighten him!" said the maiden, giving her father a nudge.
"You can remain here notwithstanding that, all the same," continued he, "You shall get all that we gave to Gottshalk; milk and cheese, and three goats which may graze wherever they like. And if that won't satisfy you, you can ask for more, for we are no niggards and misers up here. In return, you will preach us a sermon each Sunday, and pronounce a blessing over meadows and pasture-grounds, so that storms and avalanches will cause no harm. Further, you have to ring the bell, to announce the hours."
Ekkehard cast a doubtful look into the spacious cavern. It was a delicious feeling for him, to know that there were human beings close at hand: but he could not make out whence they came.
"Are your pasture-lands in the depths of the mountains?" asked he with a smile.
"He does not know where the Ebenalp is!" exclaimed the young girl compassionately. "I will show it you."
Her chip of pine-wood was still burning. She turned round to the back part of the cavern; the men following on her heels. So they went through a dark and narrow passage, into the interior of the mountain; fragments of stones were lying across the path. Often they had to bend down their heads, to be able to proceed. Faint, reddish gleams of light played on the projecting edges of the walls, and soon the flaring daylight appeared. The young girl struck her chip against the strangely formed stalactites, which hung down from the roof, so that it went out. A few steps more, and they stood on a wide and delicious Alpine tract.
Innumerable flowers were exhaling their sweet fragrance. Veronicas, orchises and lovely blue gentians, grew there in great profusion; and the Apollo, the magnificent butterfly of the Alps, with its shining red eyes on its wings, was hovering over the luxuriant petals.
After the oppressive darkness and narrowness of the cavern, a magnificent and extensive panorama, was doubly grateful to the eye.
The early morning mists were as yet lying in heavy and compact masses over the valley, looking like some mighty sea, which in the very moment, when its foam-crested billows were rising up, had been changed into stone. With clear, sharp outlines the mountain-peaks stood out against the blue sky,--like giant isles rising out of the sea of mists. The Bodensee too, was covered up with vapoury clouds, and the rows of the far off Rhetian mountains, with their craggy pinnacles were just visible through the soft haze surrounding them. The melodious tinkling of the cow-bells, was the only sound that broke the silence of that early morning hour. In Ekkehard's soul there rose a proud and yet humble prayer.
"You are going to stay with us," said the old herdsman. "I can tell so by the expression of your eyes."
"I am a homeless wanderer, whom the Abbot has not sent out hither," said Ekkehard sadly.
"That's all the same to us," replied the other. "If but we, and the old Säntis over there, are satisfied, then nobody else need be asked. The Abbot's sovereignty does not extend here. We pay him our tithes, when his stewards come here to look at our cottages, on the day when the milk is examined, because it is an old custom; but except that, we have an old proverb which says 'his fields and grounds I do not till, nor do I bow before his will.'"
"Look there!" pointing out a grey mountain-peak, which in solitary grandeur rose from far-stretching ice-fields,--"that is the high Säntis, who is the Lord and master of the mountains. We take off our hats to him, but to nobody else. There, to the right is the 'blue snow,' where in times long ago, there were meadows and pasture-grounds enough; but a proud and overbearing man lived there, who was a giant, and whose pride increased with his flocks, so that he said: 'I will be king over all, that my eyes survey.' But in the depths of the Säntis, there arose a roaring and trembling; and the ground opened and emitted floods of ice, which covered up the giant, his cottage, herds and meadows; and from the eternal snow which lies there, cold chilling winds blow down, to remind one, that besides the lord of the mountains, nobody is meant to reign here!"
The herdsman inspired Ekkehard with confidence. Independant strength, as well as a kindly heart could be perceived in his words. His daughter, meanwhile, had gathered a nosegay of Alpine roses, which she held out to Ekkehard.
"What is thy name?" asked he.
"Benedicta."
"That is a good name," said Ekkehard, fastening the Alpine roses to his girdle. "Yes, I will remain with you."
Upon this the old man shook his right hand, so as to make him wince, and then, seizing the Alpine horn which hung suspended on a strap at his side, he blew a peculiar signal.
From all sides, answering notes were heard, and soon the neighbouring herdsmen all came over; strong, wild-looking men, and assembled round the old man; whom,--on account of his good qualities,--they had elected master of the Alps, and inspector of the meadows on the Ebenalp.
"We have got a new mountain-brother," said he. "I suppose that none of you will object?"
After this address they all lifted their hands, in sign of approval, and then stepping up to Ekkehard, they bade him welcome; and his heart was touched and he made the sign of the cross over them.
Thus Ekkehard became hermit of the Wildkirchlein, scarcely knowing how it had all come about. The master of the Ebenalp kept his word, and did his best to make him comfortable. The three goats were lodged in the side-cavern. Then, he also showed him an intricate hidden path between the rocks, which led down to the Seealpsee, which contained plenty of fine trout. Further, he put some new shingles into the gaps of the roof, that wind and weather had caused in Gottshalk's blockhouse. By degrees, Ekkehard accustomed himself to the narrow confinement of his new domicile, and on the following Sunday he carried the wooden cross into the foreground of the cavern; adorned it with a wreath of newly gathered flowers, and rang the bell which had hung at the entrance ever since Gottshalk's time, and which bore the mark of Sancho, the wicked bell-founder at St. Gall. When his herdsmen, with their families of boys and girls were all assembled, he preached them a sermon on the transfiguration, and told them how everyone who ascended the mountain-heights with the right spirit, in a certain sense of the word, became transfigured also.
"And though Moses and Elijah may not come down to us," he cried, "have we not the Säntis and the Kamor standing beside us?--and they also are men of an old covenant, and it is good for us to be with them!"
His words were great and bold; and he himself wondered at them, for they were almost heretical, and he had never read such a simile in any of the churchfathers before. But the herdsmen were satisfied, and the mountains also; and there was nobody to contradict him.
At noon, Benedicta, the herdsman's daughter came up. A silver chain adorned her Sunday bodice, which encircled her bosom like a coat of mail. She brought a neat milking-pail; made of ashwood, on which, in simple outlines, a cow was carved.
"This, my father sends you," said she, "because you have preached so finely, and have spoken well of our mountains,--and if anybody should try to harm you, you are to remember that the Ebenalp is near."
She threw some handsful of hazel-nuts into the pail. "These, I have gathered for you," added she, "and if you like them, I know where to find more."
Before Ekkehard could offer his thanks, she had disappeared in the subterranean passage.
"Dark-brown are the hazel-nuts,
And brown like they, am I
And he who would my lover be,
Must be the same as I!"
she sang archly, whilst going away.
A melancholy smile rose to Ekkehard's lips.
The tempest in his heart had not yet been quite appeased. Faint murmurs were yet reverberating within; like the thunderclaps of an Alpine storm, which are repeated by innumerable echoes from the mountains.
A huge, flat piece of rock had fallen down beside his cavern. Melting snow had undermined it in the spring. It resembled a grave-stone, and he christened it inwardly, the grave of his love. There he often sat. Sometimes, he fancied the Duchess and himself lying under it; sleeping the calm sleep of the dead; and he sat down on it, and looked over the pine-clad mountains far away towards the Bodensee,--dreaming. It was not well that he could see the lake from his cell, as the sight called up continual painful recollections. Often, his heart was brimful with bitter, angry pain; often again he would strain his eyes in the direction of the Untersee of an evening, and whisper soft messages to the passing winds. For whom were they meant?
His dreams at night were generally wild and confused. He would find himself in the castle-chapel, and the everlasting lamp was rocking over the Duchess's head as it did then; but when he rushed towards her, she had the face of the woman of the wood, and grinned at him scoffingly. When he awoke from his uneasy slumbers in the early morning, his heart would often beat wildly, and the words of Dame Hadwig, "oh, schoolmaster, why didst thou not become a warrior?" persecuted him, till the sun had risen high in the sky, or the appearance of Benedicta would banish them.
Often again, he would throw himself down on the short, soft grass on the slope, and ponder over the last months of his life. In the pure, keen Alpine air, figures and events assumed clearer and more objective outlines before his inward eye, and he was tormented by the thought that he had behaved shyly and foolishly, and had not even succeeded in fulfilling his task by telling a story like Praxedis and Master Spazzo.
"Ekkehard thou hast made thyself ridiculous," muttered he to himself; and then he felt, as if he must break his head against the rocks.
A melancholy mind broods long over a wrong it has undergone; quite forgetting that a blameworthy action is only blotted out in the memory of others, by better ones following.
Therefore, Ekkehard was as yet not ripe for the healing delights of solitude. The ever-present recollection of past suffering had a strange effect on him. Whenever he sat all alone in his silent cavern, he fancied he heard voices that mockingly talked to him of foolish hopes, and the deceits of this world. The flight, and calls of the birds in the air, seemed to him the shrieks of demons, and all his praying would avail nothing against these fantastic delusions.
When the terrors of the wilderness have once taken hold of a mind, eye and ear are easily deceived and apt to believe all the old legends and tales, which assert that the air, as well as water and earth, is inhabited by legions of immortal spirits.
It was a soft, fragrant midsummer night. Ekkehard was just about to lay himself down on his simple couch, when the moon-beams fell right into the cavern. Two white clouds were sailing along the sky, one behind the other, and he overheard how they were talking together. One of them was Dame Hadwig, and the other Praxedis.
"I should really like to see, what the asylum of a wandering fool looks like," said the first white cloud, and swiftly hurrying down the steep rocky walls, she stood still on the Kamor, right opposite the cavern, and then floating down to the fir-trees which grew in great numbers in the valley below, she cried out: "It is he! Go and seize the blasphemer."
Then, the fir-trees sprang into life and became monks; thousands and thousands, and chaunting psalms and swinging rods in their hands, they began to climb up the rock towards the Wildkirchlein.
Trembling with terror, Ekkehard jumped up and seized his spear,--but now it was as if a host of will-o'-the-wisps, started out from the recesses of the cavern. "Away with you, out from the Alps!" cried they threateningly. All his pulses throbbed in the heat of fever, and so he ran away over the narrow path, along the frightful precipice, into the dark night, like a madman.
The second cloud was still standing beside the moon: "I cannot help thee," said she with Praxedis's voice, "I do not know the way."
Downhill he ran, as fast as his feet would carry him. Life had become a mere torture to him, and yet he caught hold of projecting parts of the rocks, and used his spear as a staff, not to fall down and thus get into the hands of the approaching spectres.
The nightly descent from the Hohentwiel was mere child's play, compared to this. Unconscious of all danger, he darted past precipices, and at last came down to level ground, beside the lake. The goats often fell down there, when they turned their eyes away from the grass, and gazed into the neck-breaking depth below.
At last he stood still beside the mysteriously beckoning, green Seealpsee, over which the silvery moon-beams danced and trembled. The rotten trunks, lying about on the shores, gave forth a spectral light. Ekkehard's eyes grew dim and filmy.
"Take me into thy arms," cried he, "for my heart is panting for rest."
He ran into the cool, silent flood, but his feet still touched ground, and the cooling waters of the mountain-lake, sent a delicious freshness through his feverish limbs. The water already reached to his breast, when he stopped and looked up confusedly. The white clouds had disappeared; the moon-beams having dissolved them into transparent vapours. Magnificently, and yet sadly withal, the stars were glittering high over his head.
In bold, fantastic lines the Möglisalp stretched out its grass-covered horns towards the moon. On its left, stood calm and serious, the furrowed head of the "old man" and to the right, towering above its double belt of glaciers, the stern, grey pyramid of the Säntis, surrounded by innumerable crags and pinnacles; looking like dark spectres of night.
Then, Ekkehard knelt down on the pebbly ground of the lake, so that the waters closed over his head, and rising again after a while, he stood there immovably with lifted arms, as if he were praying.
The moon now sank down behind the Säntis; a bluish light trembled over the old snow of the glaciers. A rocking pain darted through Ekkehard's brain. The mountains around him, began to rock and dance; a wailing sound streamed through the pine-woods, and the lake rose and stirred, and its waves were alive with thousands and thousands of black tadpoles....
But in soft, dewy beauty, the figure of a woman rose from the waters, and floated up to the top of the Möglisalp. There, she sat on the soft velvety grass, and shook the water from her long streaming tresses, and made herself a wreath of Alpine flowers.
In the depths of the mountains there arose a growling and trembling. The Säntis stretched himself out to his full height, and so did the old man to his right. Like gigantic Titans of old, they stormed at each other. The Säntis seized his rocks, and threw them over, and the old man tore off his head and flung it at the pyramid of the Säntis. Now the Säntis stood on the right side, and the old man was flying before him to the left;--but the lady of the lake, looked on in smiling composure, and from her mountain-peak, she mocked the stone combatants. And she shook her yellow curls, out of which there fell down a pearly waterfall; and it flowed down wilder and wilder, till it whirled the maiden with the liquid eyes, back into the lake.
Upon this, the uproar and strife ceased suddenly. The old man took up his head; put it on again, and singing a sad, mournful strain, he returned to his old place. And the Säntis likewise had resumed his post, and his glaciers were glittering calmly as before.
... When Ekkehard awoke the next morning, he lay in his cavern, shaken with feverish cold. His knees felt as if they were broken.
The sun stood at his zenith, when Benedicta flitted past the cavern, and saw him lying there trembling, and wrapped in his wolf's skin mantle. His habit hung heavy and dripping over a piece of rock.
"When you again are going to fish for trout in the Seealpsee," said she, "you had better let me know, so that I can lead you. The goat-boy who met you before sunrise, told us that you had staggered up the hill like a man walking in his sleep."
She went and rang the midday bell for him.