Ekkehard: A Tale of the Tenth Century. Vol. 1 (of 2)

by Joseph Victor von Scheffel

The cloister-inmates did not seem inclined as yet to let this day's unusual liberty end here. In the Abbot's eyes there was a peculiarly soft and lenient expression, and the cellarer also never said "nay," when the brothers descended with their emptied wine-jugs into the vaults below.

At the fourth table the old Tutilo began to get jolly, and was telling his inevitable story of the robbers. Louder and louder his powerful voice rang through the hall: "One of them turned to fly,--I after him with my oaken stick,--he throws away spear and shield to the ground,--I quickly seize him by the throat, force the spear into his hand and cry, 'thou knave of a robber, for what art thou encumbering the world? Thou shalt fight with me!'" ...

But they had all heard it too often already how he had then in honest fight split open the scull of his antagonist,--so they eagerly requested him, to sing some favourite song, and on his giving an assenting nod, some of them hurried out, presently to return with their instruments. One of them brought a lute, another a violin with one string only, a third a sort of dulcimer with metal pegs, which were played on with a tuning key, and a fourth a small ten-stringed harp. This last curious-looking instrument was called a psalter, and its three-cornered shape was held to be a symbol of the Trinity.

When the instruments were tuned, they gave him his baton of ebony. Smilingly the hoary artist received it, and rising from his seat, gave them the signal to play a piece of music, which he himself had composed in his younger days. Gladly the others listened; only Gerold the steward, became rather melancholy on hearing the melodious sounds, for he was just counting the emptied dishes and stone jugs, and like a text to the melody the words vibrated through his mind: "How much this one day has swallowed up in goods and money?" Softly he beat time with his sandal-clad foot, until the last note had died away.

At the bottom of the table a silent guest, with a pale olive complexion and black curls, was sitting. He came from Italy, and had accompanied the mules loaded with chestnuts and oil, from Lombardy over the Alp. In melancholy silence, he let the floods of song pass over him.

"Well, Master Giovanni," said Folkard the painter, "has the fine Italian ear been satisfied? The Emperor Julianus once compared the singing of our forefathers to the screeching of wild birds, but since that time we have made progress. Did it not sound lovelier in your ears than the singing of wild swans?"

"Lovelier--than the singing of swans"--repeated the stranger in dreamy accents. Then he arose and quietly stole away. Nobody in the monastery ever read what he wrote down in his journal that evening.

"These men on the other side of the Alp," he wrote, "when they let their thundering voices rise up to heaven, never can attain to the sweetness of an artistic modulation. Truly barbarous is the roughness of their wine-guzzling throats and whenever they attempt by sinking and then raising their voices, to attain a melodious softness,--all nature shudders at the sound, and it resembles the creaking of chariot-wheels on frozen ground." ...

Master Spazzo intending to end well, what he had so well begun, slunk away to the building in which Praxedis and her companions were installed, and said: "You are to come to the Duchess, and that at once." The maidens first laughed at his cowl, and then followed him into the refectory, as there was no one to hinder their entrance; and as soon as they became visible at the open door, a buzzing and murmuring began, as if a dancing and jumping were now to commence, such as these walls had never before experienced.

Sir Cralo the abbot, however looked at the Duchess, and exclaimed: "My Lady Cousin!" and he said it with such a touching, woe-begone expression, that she started up from her reverie. And suddenly she looked with different eyes than before on the chamberlain and herself, in their monks habits, as well as on the rows of carousing men. The faces of the more distant ones were hidden by their projecting hoods, and it looked as if the wine was being poured down into empty cowls; in short, the scene altogether with the boisterous music appeared to her like a mad masquerade, that had lasted too long already.