After these laudable achievements, Heribald directed his steps to the cloister-garden. Another project now occupied his mind. He intended to cut a few delicate lettuces for his dinner, and to dress them a good deal better than they would ever have been done, during the time of the father head-cook's superintendance. Temptingly the vision rose before him, how he would not spare the oil-jug, and would pitilessly cut to pieces some of the biggest onions; when a cloud of dust rose on the opposite shore and the forms of horses and riders became visible.
"Are you there, already?" said the monk, making the sign of the cross and then mumbling a hasty prayer; but a few moments later, his face had resumed its customary smile of contentment.
"Strange wanderers and pilgrims are to meet with a christian reception, at the gate of any house of the Lord," murmured he. "I will receive them."
A new idea now crossed his brain, and again passing his hand over his forehead, he exclaimed: "Have I not studied the history of the ancients, in the cloister-school, and learned how the Roman Senators received the invading Gauls?--Dressed in their mantles, the ivory sceptre in their hands, the venerable men sat in their chairs, immovable like bronze idols. Ah well, the Latin teacher shall not have told us in vain, that this was a most worthy reception. Heribald can do the same!"
A mild imbecility may be an enviable dower, now and then in life. That, which appears black to others, seems to the half-witted, blue or green, and if his path be zig-zag, he does not notice the serpents hidden in the grass; and the precipice into which the wise man inevitably falls, he stumbles over, without even perceiving the threatening danger....
A curule chair not being just then in the monastery, Heribald pushed a huge oak stem towards the gate which led into the court-yard. "For what end have we studied secular history, if we cannot even take counsel by it?" said he, seating himself quietly on his block, in expectation of that which was to come.
Opposite on the near shore, a troop of horsemen had stopped. With their reins slung round their arms, and their arrows ready fastened on their bows, they had gone on ahead, to reconnoitre the land.' When no ambuscade came out from behind the willows bordering the lake, they stopped a while to rest their horses. Then the arrows were put back into their quivers; the crooked sabres taken between the teeth, and pressing the spurs into the horses sides, they went into the lake. Quickly the horses crossed the blue waves. Now the foremost men had touched the land, and jumping from their saddles, shook themselves three times, like a poodle coming out of its bath, and then with piercing, triumphant shouts they approached the monastery.
Like an image of stone, Heribald sat at his post, gazing undauntedly at the strange figures before him. As yet he had never passed a sleepless night, musing over the perfection of human beauty, but the faces which now met his view, struck him as being so very ugly, that he could not suppress a startled, "Have mercy upon us, oh Lord!"
Partly bent, the strange guests were sitting in their saddles; their shrunk, meagre little bodies dressed in beasts' skins. From their square-shaped skulls, black, shaggy hair hung down in wild disorder; and their unshapely yellow faces, glistened as if they had been anointed with tallow. One of the foremost had enlarged his coarse-lipped mouth considerably, by a voluntary cut at the corners, and from their small, deep-set eyes they looked out suspiciously at the world.
"To make a Hun, one need only give a square shape to a lump of clay, put on a smaller lump for a nose, and drive in the chin"--Heribald was just thinking, when they stood before him. He did not understand their hissing language, and smiled complacently, as if the whole gang did not regard him in the least. For a while they kept staring with unbounded astonishment, at this puzzling specimen of humanity,--as critics are apt to do at a new poet, of whom they do not as yet know, in what pigeonhole of ready made judgments they are to put him. At last one of them beheld the bald place on Heribald's pate, and pointing at it with his sabre,--upon which the others raised a hoarse laugh,--he seized his bow and arrow to aim at the monk. But now Heribald's patience had come to an end, and a feeling of Allemannic pride coming over him as he confronted this rabble, he jumped up calling out: "By the tonsure of St. Benedict, the crown of my head shall not be mocked at, by any heathenish dog!" He had seized the reins of one of the foremost riders, and snatching away his sabre, was just going to assume an aggressive attitude, when quicker than lightning, one of the Huns threw a noose over his head and pulled him down. Then they tied his hands to his back, and were already raising their death-bringing arms, when a distant tramping was heard, like the approach of a mighty army. This occurrence for the moment completely drew off their attention from the idiot. They threw him like a sack against his oak-trunk, and quickly galloped back to the shore. The whole body of the Hunnic legion had now arrived on the opposite shore. The vanguard, by a shrill whistle, gave the signal that all was safe. At one of the extremities of the island, overgrown with reeds, they had spied a ford, which could be crossed on horseback with dry feet. This they showed to their friends, who now swarmed over like wild bees; many hundred horsemen. Their united forces had availed nothing against the walls of Augsburg and the Bishop's prayers; so, divided into several troops, they now ravaged the land. Their faces, figures and manner of sitting on horseback were all alike, for with uncultivated races, the features are mostly cast in one mould; indicating that the vocation of the individual lies in conforming itself to the mass, instead of contrasting with it.