When late at night he sat in his tower on the Hohentwiel, thinking of all that had happened that day, he beheld a distant gleam of fire. He looked out and saw that the fiery blaze, arose from the fir-trees on the Hohenkrähen. The woman of the wood, had been paying her last visit to the future chapel of St. Hadwig.
CHAPTER X.
[Christmas.]
The evening on the Hohenkrähen, cast a gloom also over the following days. Misunderstandings are not easily forgiven; least of all by him who has caused them.
For this reason, Dame Hadwig spent some days in a very bad humour, in her own private apartments. Grammar and Virgil had both a holiday. With Praxedis, she took up the old jest about the schoolmasters at Constantinople; seeming now to enjoy it much better. Ekkehard came to ask whether he were to continue his lessons. "I have got a toothache," said the Duchess. Expressing his regret, he attributed it to the rough autumnal weather.
Every day, he asked several times how she was, which somewhat conciliated the Duchess.
"How is it," said she to Praxedis, "that a person can be of so much more real worth, than he appears outwardly to possess?"
"That comes from a want of gracefulness," replied the Greek maid. "In other countries I often found the reverse; but here, people are too lazy, to manifest their individuality by every movement or word. They prefer thinking, to acting; believing that the whole world must be able to read on their foreheads, what is passing within."
"But we are generally so industrious," said Dame Hadwig, complacently.
"The buffaloes likewise work the live-long day," Praxedis had almost said,--but she finally contented herself, with merely thinking it.