Like the waters from a fountain, did the scientific flood stream forth from the youthful lips. In astronomy also he was quite at home, and his uncle had to listen patiently to the praise of Zoroaster, and King Ptolemæus of Egypt. Further he had to undergo a strict examination himself, about the shape and application of the astrolabe, and finally the curly-headed nephew began to demonstrate how absurd was the opinion of those, who believed that on the other side of the globe lived the honourable race of the antipodes!
All these fine things he had learned only five days ago,--but at last his uncle did what the brave Emperor Otto did, when the famous Bishop of Rheims, and Otrich the cathedral-schoolmaster of Magdeburg and hundreds of learned abbots and scholars, held their great contest about the basis and classification of theoretical philosophy, before him,--namely he yawned. At that critical moment, Praxedis reappeared with a delicious cherry-tart and a basket filled with various fruits, and these good things speedily gave a more natural turn to the thoughts of the fifteen-years-old philosopher. Like a well-educated boy, he first said grace before eating, as was customary in the monastery, and then he turned his attentions to the annihilation of the cherry-tart, leaving the question of the antipodes to some future time.
Praxedis now turned to Ekkehard. "The Duchess bids me tell you," she said with mock earnestness, "that she feels inclined to return to the study of Virgil. She is anxious to learn the final fate of Queen Dido,--and so we are to begin again this very evening. Remember that you are to wear a more cheerful expression than the present one," added she in a lower key, "as it is a delicate attention, in order to show you that in spite of a certain treatise, her confidence in your learning has not been destroyed."
This was a fact; but Ekkehard received the news with a start of terror. To be again together with the two women as he used to be,--the mere thought was painful. He had not yet learnt to forget a certain Good Friday morning.
He now slapped his nephew on the shoulder, so as to make him start, and said: "Thou hast not come here to spend thy holidays merely with fishing and bird-catching, Burkhard. This afternoon we will read Virgil with the gracious Duchess, and thou shalt be present also."
He thought to place the boy like a shield between the Duchess and his thoughts.
"Very well," replied Burkhard, with cherry-dyed lips. "I prefer Virgil a great deal to hunting and riding, and I shall request the Lady Duchess to teach me some Greek. After that visit when they took you away with them, the cloister-pupils often said, that she knew more Greek than all the venerable fathers of the monastery, put together. They say that she learnt it by sorcery. And although I am the first in Greek ..."
"Then you will certainly be Abbot in five years, and in twenty, holy father at Rome," said Praxedis mockingly. "Meanwhile you would do well to wash your blue lips in yonder spring."
At the fourth hour of the evening, Ekkehard was waiting in the pillared hall below, ready to resume his reading of the Æneid. More than six months had gone by, during which Virgil had been laid aside. Ekkehard felt oppressed. He opened one of the windows through which the pleasant cool air of evening came streaming in.
The cloister-pupil was turning over the leaves of the Latin manuscript.