"Well, I might have guessed as much," roared the cellarer, "St. Gallish crab-apples! You may be recognized by your fruits. Rough ground, rough faith and rougher people! Just wait for the present I shall make thee in return!"
Looking about for some weapon, and perceiving a good-sized broom, he took it up, and was just about to attack the disturber of his peace, when a commanding voice called out from the gate:
"Stop! Peace be with you!"--and a second voice with a foreign accent exclaimed: "What Holofernes has sprung out of the ground here?"
It was the Abbot Wazmann, who with his friend Simon Bardo, the former Protospathar of the Greek Emperor, was returning from blessing the new wine. The noise of the quarrel had interrupted a very learned discussion of the Greek, on the siege of the town of Haï by Joshua; and the strategic mistakes of the king of Haï, when he went out at the head of his army, towards the desert. The old Greek commander who had left his home, not to lose his strength of body and mind, in the peaceful state of Byzantium, employed himself very zealously with the study of tactics, in his leisure hours; and he was jestingly called, "the Captain of Capernaum," although he had adopted the garb of the Order.
"Make room for the fight," cried Simon Bardo, who had witnessed with regret the interruption, of the combat by the Abbot. "In my dreams last night I saw a rain of fiery sparks. That means fighting."
But the Abbot in whose eyes the self-assumed power of younger brothers was most obnoxious, commanded peace, and desired to hear the case before him, that he might settle it.
Then Rudimann began his tale, and kept back nothing. "A slight misbehaviour," murmured the Abbot. "Chapter forty-six, of misbehaviour during work-time, whilst gardening or fishing, in the kitchen or cellar. Allemannic law, of that which is done to maids, ... let the antagonist speak."
Then Ekkehard also told what he had witnessed; and how he had acted on the impulse of a just and righteous indignation.
"This is complicated," murmured the Abbot. "Chapter seventy: no brother shall dare to strike a fellow-brother, without the Abbot's sanction. Chapter seventy-two: of that which is becoming in a monk; and which leads to eternal felicity, ... How old are you?"
"Twenty-three."