Now, the singing of sweet boyish voices was heard. The voices were those of the younger cloister-pupils who came to do homage to the Duchess. Children as they were, the little fellows wore already the monk's habit, and several even the tonsure on their eleven years old heads. When the procession of the little rosy-cheeked future abbots came in sight, with their eyes cast down and singing their sequences so seriously, a slight, mocking smile played round Dame Hadwig's lips, and with her strong foot, she upset the nearest of the baskets, so that the apples rolled about enticingly on the ground, in the midst of the boys. But unabashed they continued their walk; only one of the youngest wanted to bend down and take up the tempting fruit, which his companion forcibly prevented, by taking a good hold of his girdle.
Much pleased the Abbot witnessed the young folks' excellent behaviour and said: "Discipline distinguishes human beings from animals, and if you were to throw the apples of Hesperides amongst them, they would remain stedfast."
Dame Hadwig was touched. "Are all your pupils so well trained?" asked she.
"If you like to convince yourself with your own eyes," said the Abbot, "you will see that the elder ones know quite as well the meaning of obedience and submission."
The Duchess nodding an assent, was then led into the outer cloister-school, in which the sons of noblemen, and those who intended to join the secular clergy, were educated.
They entered the upper class. In the lecturer's chair stood Ratpert, the wise and learned teacher who was initiating his pupils into the mysteries of Aristotle's logic. With bent heads the young scholars sat before their parchments, scarcely lifting their eyes to look at the party now entering. The teacher inwardly thought this a good opportunity to gather some laurels, and called out, "Notker Labeo!" This was the pearl amongst his pupils, the hope of science, who on a weakly body carried a powerful head, with an immense protruding under-lip, the cause of his surname, the symbol of great determination and perseverance on the stony roads of investigation.
"He will become a great man," whispered the Abbot. "Already in his twelfth year he said that the world was like a book, and that the monasteries were the classical passages in it."
The young man in question, let his eyes glide over the Greek text, and then translated with pompous solemnity the deep intricate meaning thereof:
"If on a stone or piece of wood, you find a straight line running through, that is the mutual line of demarcation, of the even surface. If the stone or wood were to split along that line, then we should behold two intersections, near the visible chink, where there was only one line before. Besides this we see two new surfaces, which are as broad as the object was thick, before one could see the new surface. From this it appears that this object existed as one whole, before it was separated."
But when this translation had been well got through, some of the young logicians put their heads together, and began to whisper, and the whispers became louder and louder;--even the cloister-pupil Hepidan, who undisturbed by Notker's capital translation, was employing all his skill to carve a devil with a double pair of wings, and a long curling tail, on the bench before him, stopped with his work. Then the teacher addressed the next boy, with the question: "But how does the surface become a mutual line of demarcation?" upon which he began to blunder over the Greek text; but the commotion in the school-benches became louder still, so that there arose a buzzing and booming like distant alarm bells. The translation ceased altogether and suddenly the whole mass of Ratpert's pupils rushed up noisily, towards the Duchess. In the next moment they had torn her from the Abbot's side, shouting "caught, caught," and making barricades with the benches, they repeated their cries: "We have caught the Duchess of Suabia! What shall be her ransom?"