"You are to relate something!"
"I am to relate something," murmured he, passing his right hand over his forehead. It was burning and inside it, was a storm.
"Ah yes--relate something. Who is going to play the lute for me?"
He stood up and gazed out into the moonlit night, whilst the others looked at him in mute wonder, and then he began in a strange, hollow voice:
"'Tis a short story. There once was a light, which shone brightly, and it shone down from a hill, and it was more radiant and glorious than the rainbow. And it wore a rose under the headband ..."
"A rose under the headband?" muttered Master Spazzo, shaking his head.
"... And there was once a dusky moth," continued Ekkehard, still in the same tone, "which flew up to the hill, and which knew that it must perish if it flew into the light.--And it did fly in all the same, and the light burned the dark moth, so that it became mere ashes,--and never flew any more. Amen!"
Dame Hadwig sprang up, indignantly.
"Is that the whole of your story?" asked she.
"'Tis the whole of it," replied he with unchanged voice.