"I once heard from a very wise preacher" said Praxedis, "that there are several remedies. Sleeping, drinking and travelling--but that the best is fasting and praying."
Then Dame Hadwig rested her head on her lily-white hand, and looking sharply at the quick-witted Greek, she said: "To-morrow we will go on a journey."
CHAPTER II.
[The Disciples of St. Gallus.]
The next day, the Duchess crossed the Bodensee in the early glow of the morning-sun, accompanied by Praxedis and a numerous train. The lake was beautifully blue; the flags floated in the air, and much fun was going on, on board the ship. And who could be melancholy, when gliding over the clear, crystal waters; past the green shores with their many towers and castles; snowy peaks rising in the distance; and the reflection of the white sails, trembling and breaking in the playful waves?
Nobody knew where the end of the journey was to be. But then they were accustomed to obey without questioning.
When they approached the bay at Rorschach, the Duchess commanded them to land there. So the prow was turned to the shore, and soon after she crossed lightly over the rocking plank and stepped on land. Here the toll-gatherer, who received the duty from all those who travelled to Italy, and the market-master, as well as those who held any official position, came to meet their sovereign; and calling out lustily "Hail Herro!" "Hail Liebo"[[3]] waved big branches of mighty fir-trees over their heads. Graciously returning their salutations, the Duchess walked through the deferential crowd, which fell back on either side, and ordered her chamberlain to distribute some silver coins;--but there was not much time for tarrying. Already the horses which had been secretly sent on before, in the night, stood ready waiting, and when all were in the saddle, Dame Hadwig gave the word of command: "To the holy Gallus." Then her servants looked at each other with wondering eyes, as if asking, "what business can we have there?" But there was not even time for an answer, as the cavalcade was already cantering over the hilly ground towards the monastery itself.
St. Benedict and his disciples knew very well on what places to build their monasteries. Up-hill and down-hill, wherever you find a large building, which like a fortress, commands a whole tract of land, or blocks up the entrance to a valley, or forms the central point of crossing highways, or that lies buried amongst vineyards, famous for their exquisite wines,--there the passing tourist,--until the contrary has been proved to him--may boldly advance the assertion, that the house in question belongs, or rather belonged formerly to the order of St. Benedict, for in our days monasteries become scarcer and inns, more plentiful, which phenomenon may be ascribed to the progress of civilisation.
The Irish saint Gallus, had also chosen a lovely spot, when pining for forest-air he settled down in this Helvetian solitude: In a high mountain-glen, separated by steep hills from the milder shores of the Bodensee, through which many a wild torrent rushed in mad flight, whilst on the other side rose the gigantic rocks of the Alpstein, whose snowcapped peaks disappear in the clouds, there, sheltered by the mountain, the monastery lay cradled at its foot. It was a strange thing for those apostles of Albion and Erin, to extend their missions unto the German continent, but if one examines the matter closely, their merit in doing so, is not so great as it appears at first sight.
"The taste for visiting foreign lands, is so deeply rooted in the minds of Britons, that it cannot be eradicated,"--thus wrote as early as in the times of Charlemagne, a simple, trust-worthy historian. They were simply the predecessors and ancestors of the present British tourists, and might be recognized even at a distance by the foreign, curious shape of their knapsacks. Now and then one of them would settle down for good somewhere, although the honest natives of the soil did not always look with favourable eyes on the intruder. Still their greater pertinacity, the inheritance of all Britons, the art of colonizing and the mystic veneration which all that is foreign, always inspires in the lower classes, made their missionary endeavours rather successful. With other times we have other customs! In the present day the descendants of those saints are making rail-roads for the Swiss, for good Helvetian money.