In Heribald's weak mind, the idea began to dawn, that the Huns might not be the worst guests, on German ground. He held his tongue, however, and returned to the garden, where he plucked some sage leaves and rubbed his back with them.
Master Spazzo strode over the cloister-yard to the gate, which, through the cross-passage, led into the interior. He had assumed his heaviest tread. The bell that announced dinner was just ringing. One of the brothers now came quickly across the yard. Him, Master Spazzo now seized by his garment.
"Call down the Abbot!" said he. The monk looked at him in mute astonishment; then, casting a side look at the chamberlain's worn hunting-suit, he replied: "It is the hour for our mid-day meal. If you are invited, which however seems rather doubtful to me,"--with another ironical look, at Master Spazzo's outward man, ... but he was spared the end of his sentence, for the chamberlain dealt the hungry brother such a genuine cuff, that he was sent reeling into the yard again, like a well thrown shuttle-cock. The mid-day sun shone on the smooth tonsure of the prostrate man.
The Abbot had already been informed of the violent assault, which the convent-farmer had made on one of the Duchess's subjects. He now heard the noise in the courtyard and on stepping up to the window, he was just in time to see the pious brother Ivo, sent flying out into the yard. "Happy is he, who knows the secret causes of things," says Virgil, and Abbot Wazmann was in that happy condition. He had seen Master Spazzo's feathers nodding over at him with a threatening aspect, from out the sombre cross-passage.
"Call down the Abbot!" was again shouted up from the courtyard, so that the panes of the little cell-windows vibrated.
Meanwhile, the soup was getting cold in the refectory, so that the assembled brotherhood at last fell to, without waiting any longer for the Abbot.
Abbot Wazmann had sent for Rudimann the cellarer. "All this annoyance, we surely owe to that green-beak of St. Gall! Oh, Gunzo, Gunzo! No one ought to wish ill to his neighbour, but still I cannot help revolving in my mind, whether our strong-handed yeomen, had not done better to hurl their stones at that hypocrite Ekkehard, rather than at the Hunnic wizard!"
A monk now shyly entered the Abbot's room.
"You are desired to come down," said he in low accents. "There is somebody down stairs, who shouts and commands, like a mighty man."
Then the Abbot said to Rudimann the cellarer: "It must be very bad weather, with the Duchess. I know the chamberlain, and that he is a perfect weather-cock. Whenever his mistress wears a smile round her haughty lips, then he laughs with his whole face, and when clouds have gathered on her forehead, then a downright thunderstorm will explode with him" ...