"But who does not know what the verses of a set of overbearing monks, must be like? What do such as they know of the inner structure of a poem, where all must be artistically built up, to produce a fine and pleasing effect? What of the high dignity of poetry?--They pucker up their lips, and spout forth a poem, like to that Lucilius, who has been branded by Horace; and who, whilst standing on one foot only, dictated two hundred verses and more, before an hour had elapsed.
"Judge now, ye venerable brothers, what insults have been heaped on me; and what must be the character of the man, who can upbraid his fellow-creature for mistaking an ablativus!"
The man, who intending only a harmless jest, had committed this fearful crime, was Ekkehard. But a few weeks before the sudden turn in his fate brought him to the Hohentwiel, the terrible deed had been done. With the coming morn on the next day, he had forgotten the conversation that had taken place at supper with the overbearing Italian, but in the bosom of him, who had been convicted of the wrong ablativus, was matured a rancour as fierce and gnawing as that, which, caused by the war-deeds of Achilles, drove the Telamonian Aïas, to destroy himself, and which followed him even into the Hades.
He rode towards the north out of the valley along through which the Sitter rushes; he saw the Bodensee and the Rhine, and thought of the ablativus! He entered the grey and ancient gates of Cologne, and crossed the frontiers of Belgium,--but the false ablativus sat behind him on the saddle like an incubus. The cloister-walls of the holy Amandus could not exclude it; and in the early psalms at morning, and during the litany and vespers, the accusativus, rose before his mind, exacting its expiatory sacrifice.
Of all the unpleasant days of one's life, those imprint themselves deepest in our minds, in which by our own fault, a humiliation has befallen us. Instead of being angry with one's self, one easily bears an ill will towards all those, who were the involuntary witnesses of our defeat. The human heart is so very unwilling to confess its own failings; and many a one who unmoved can think of past battles and dangers, feels his blood rush into his cheeks, at the recollection of some foolish word, which escaped him just then, when he would have liked so much to have made a brilliant remark.
Therefore Gunzo was bent on taking his revenge on Ekkehard, and he had an able and sharp pen, and had spent many a month over his work, so that it became a master-piece of its kind. It was a black soup, made up of hundreds of learned quotations, richly seasoned with pepper and worm-wood, and all those spicy, bitter things, which before all others, give such a delicious flavour to the controversies of ecclesiastical men.
Besides this, a delightful undercurrent of rudeness pervaded the whole; so that the reader feels as though a man were being thrashed with regular flails, in a neighbouring barn. This makes a very pleasant contrast to our present times, in which the poison is presented in the shape of gilt pills; and when the combatants first exchange a polite bow, before they break each others heads.
The treatise was divided into two parts; the first serving to prove, that only an ignorant and uncultivated mind could be shocked by so slight an error, as the mistaking of a casus; whilst the second was written in order to convince the world that the author himself, was the wisest, most learned, and at the same time most pious of all his contemporaries.
For this end he had read the classics and the holy Scriptures, in the sweat of his brow, so that he could make a list of all the places in which the caprice, or negligence of the author, had also misplaced an ablativus. So he managed to name two in Virgil, one in Homer, Terence and Priscianus. Further an example out of Persius, where the ablative stands in the place of the genitive, besides a number of instances out of the books of Moses, and the Psalms.
And if a number of such instances, can be found even in the holy Scriptures, who is so wicked, that he would dare to blame or change, such a mode of expression? Wrongly, therefore believes the little monk of St. Gall, that I was not well versed in the grammar; although my tongue may sometimes be impeded, by the habits of my own language, which, though derived from the Latin, is yet very different from it. Now, blunders are made, through carelessness, and human imperfection in general; for, says Priscianus very truly: "I do not believe, that of all human inventions, a single one, can be perfect in all respects, and on all sides. In like manner, Horace has often taken it on himself, to excuse negligences of style and language, in eminent men: 'sometimes even the good Homer is slumbering,' and Aristotle says in his book on the hermeneia: 'All that, which our tongue utters, is merely an outward expression of that which is stamped on our mind. The idea of a thing, therefore is always pre-existent before the expression, and therefore the thing itself is of far greater importance, than the mere word. But whenever the meaning is abstruse, thou shalt patiently, and with thy reasoning powers, try to find out the real import.'"