Benedicta's goats were grazing around him, and he could hear how the juicy Alpine-grass was greedily munched between their sharp teeth. Restless clouds drifted along the hillsides; and on a piece of white lime-stone, with her face towards the Säntis, sat Benedicta. She was playing on a queer sort of a flute. It was a simple and melodious air; like a voice from the days of youth. With two wooden milk-spoons in her left hand she beat time. She was a proficient in this art, and her father would often say with regret: "Tis really a pity! She deserved to be called Benedictus, as she would have made a capital herdsman."
When the rythmical air came to an end, she gave a loud shout in the direction of the neighbouring alp, upon which the soft tones of an Alpine horn were heard. Her sweetheart, the herdsman on the Klus stood under the dwarf fir-tree, blowing the ranz des vaches,--that strange, primitive music, which unlike any other melody, seems at first a mere humming sound, which an imprisoned bumble-bee, searching for an outlet, might produce, and that by-and-by, rises and swells into that wondrous song of longing, love, and home-sickness, creeping into the very heart's core; filling it either with rapturous joy, or making it almost break with sorrow.
"I trow that you are quite well again, mountain-brother," cried Benedicta to Ekkehard, "as you are lying so contentedly on your back. Did you like the music?"
"Yes," said Ekkehard, "go on!"
He could scarcely gaze his fill, on all the beauty around him. To the left, in silent grandeur, stood the Säntis, with his kindred. Ekkehard, already knew them by their different names, and greeted them as his dear neighbours. Before him, a confused mass of smaller hills and mountains, green luxuriant meadow-lands, and dark pine-woods lay extended. A part of the Rhinevalley, bordered by the heights of the Arl-mountains and the distant Rhætian Alps, looked up at him. A vapoury stripe of mist indicated the mirror of the Bodensee, which it covered; and all that he saw was wide and grand and beautiful.
He, who has felt the mysterious influence which reigns on airy mountain-peaks, widening and ennobling the human heart, raising it heavenwards, in loftier thoughts, he, is filled with a sort of smiling pity, when he thinks of those, who, in the depth below, are dragging tiles and sand together, for the building of new towers of Babel; and he will unite in that joyous mountain-cry, which according to the old herdsman, is equal to a paternoster before the Lord.
The sun was standing over the Kronberg, inclining towards the west, and deluging the heavens with a flood of golden light. He likewise sent his rays into the mists over the Bodensee, so that the white veil slowly dissolved, and in soft, delicate blue tints, the Untersee became visible. Ekkehard strained his eyes, and beheld a filmy dark spot, which was the island of Reichenau, and a mountain which scarcely rose above the horizon, but he knew it well,--it was the Hohentwiel.
The ranz des vaches accompanied the tinkling of the cow-bells, and over the prospect was a continually increasing warmth of colour. The meadows were steeped in a golden-brown green, and even the grey lime-stone walls of the Kamor, were dyed with a faint roseate hue. Then, Ekkehard's soul also glowed and brightened. His thoughts flew away, over into the Hegau, and he fancied himself once more sitting with Dame Hadwig on the Hohenstoffeln, when they celebrated Cappan's wedding, and saw Audifax and Hadumoth, who appeared to him the very embodiment of earthly happiness, coming home from the Huns. There arose also from the dust and rubbish of the past, what the eloquent Conrad of Alzey, had once told him of Waltari and Hiltgunde. The joyous spirit of poetry entered his mind. He rose and jumped up into the air, in a way, which must have pleased the Säntis. In the imagery of poetry, the poor heart could rejoice over that, which life could never give it;--the glory of knighthood, and the felicity of wedded love.
"I will sing the song of Waltari of Aquitania!" cried he to the setting sun, and it was as if he saw his friend Conrad of Alzey, standing between the Sigelsalp and Maarwiese, in robes of light, and nodding a smiling approval to this plan.
So, Ekkehard cheerfully set to work. "What is done here, must either be well done, or not at all, else the mountains will laugh at us," the herdsman had once said, to which remark, he had then nodded a hearty assent. The goat-boy was sent into the valley to fetch some eggs and honey; so, Ekkehard begged his master to give him a holiday, and entrusted him with a letter to his nephew. He wrote it in a cipher, well known at the monastery, so that no other persons could read it. The contents of the letter were as follows: