"Will you pray for me also, when I am dead?" continued he. "Oh no, you must not pray for me! ... but you must let a goblet be made out of my skull, and when you take another monk away from the monastery of St. Gallus, you must offer him the welcome draught in it,--and give him my greeting!--You can put your own lips to it also; it will not crack. But you must then wear the head-band with the rose in it." ...
"Ekkehard!" said the Duchess, "you are trespassing!"
He put his right hand up to his forehead.
"Ah yes!" said he in a soft, mournful voice, "ah yes!... the Rhine is trespassing also. They have stopped its course with gigantic rocks, but it has gnawed them all through, and is now rushing and roaring onwards; carrying everything before it, in its glorious newly won liberty!... And God must be trespassing also methinks; for he has allowed the Rhine to be, and the Hohentwiel and the Duchess of Suabia, and the tonsure on my head."
The Duchess began to shiver. Such an outbreak of long repressed feeling, she had not expected. But, it was too late,--her heart remained untouched.
"You are ill," she said.
"Ill?" asked he, "it is merely a requital. More than a year ago, at Whitsuntide, when there was as yet no Hohentwiel for me, I carried the coffin of St. Gallus in solemn procession out of the cloister, and a woman threw herself on the ground before me. 'Get up,' cried I, but she remained prostrate in the dust. 'Walk over me with thy relic, oh priest, so that I may recover,' cried she, and my foot stepped over her. That woman suffered from the heartache. Now 'tis reversed." ...
Tears interrupted his voice. He could not go on. Then, he threw himself at Dame Hadwig's feet, clasping the hem of her garment. His whole frame was convulsed with trembling.
Dame Hadwig was touched; touched against her will; as if from the hem of her garment, a feeling of unutterable woe thrilled her, up to her very heart.
"Get up," said she, "and try to think of other things. You still owe us a story. You will soon have conquered this weakness."