"All alone, and away from the merry-makers?" asked she. "What are you doing here?"
"I am thinking, where real happiness may be found," replied Ekkehard.
"Happiness?" repeated the Duchess. "'Fortune is a fickle dame, who seldom stays long anywhere,' says the proverb. Has she never paid you a visit?"
"Probably not," said the monk, riveting his eyes on the ground. With renewed vigour, the music and noise of the dancers struck the ear.
"Those who lightly tread the green meadowlands, and know how to express with their feet, what oppresses their hearts, are happy," continued he. "Perhaps one requires very little to be happy; but above all,"--pointing over to the distant, glittering Alpine peaks,--"there must be no distant heights which our feet may never hope to reach."
"I do not understand you," coldly said the Duchess, but her heart thought otherwise than her tongue. "And how fares your Virgil," said she, changing the conversation. "During those days of anxiety and warfare, I am afraid that dust and cobwebs will have settled on it."
"He will always find a refuge in my heart, even if the parchment should decay," replied he. "Only a few moments ago, his verses in praise of agriculture, passed through my mind. Yonder the little house, nestling in the shade-giving trees; down below, the dark fertile fields; and a newly wedded pair, going to earn their bread with hoe and plough from kind mother Earth. With a feeling almost of envy, Virgil's picture rose before me:"
"Simple and artless, his life is with many a blessing surrounded,
Rich with many a joy, and peaceful rest after labour,
Grottoes and shady retreats, affording a shelter for slumber."
"You well know, how to adapt his verses to life," said Dame Hadwig, "but I fear, that your envy has made you forget Cappan's duties of destroying the moles, and the obnoxious field-mice. And then the joys of winter! when the snow rises like a wall up to the straw-thatched roof, so that daylight is sorely perplexed through what chink or crevice, it may creep into the house." ...
"Even such a dilemma, I could bear with composure, and Virgil too, knows how this may be done."