Then Ekkehard laughed through his tears.
"A story!" cried he, "yes, a story! But it must not be told. Come, let us act the story! From the height of yonder tower one can see so far into the distance, and so deep into the valley below,--so sweet and deep, and tempting. What right has the ducal castle to hold us back? Nobody who wishes to get down into the depth below, need count more than three, ... and we should flutter and glide softly into the arms of Death, awaiting us down there. Then, I should be no longer a monk, and I might wind my arms around you,--and he who sleeps here in the ground below," striking Sir Burkhard's tombstone with his clenched hand; "shall not prevent me! If he, the old man should come, I would not let you go, and we will float up to the tower again, and sit where we sat before, and we will read the Æneïd to the end, and you must wear the rose under your head-band, as if nothing whatever had happened. The gate we will keep well locked against the Duke, and we will laugh at all evil backbiting tongues, and folks will say, when sitting at their fire-places of a winter's evening: 'that is a pretty tale of the faithful Ekkehard, who slew the Emperor Ermenrich for hanging the Harlungen brothers, and who afterwards sat for many hundred years before Dame Venus's mountain, with his white staff in his hands, and he meant to sit there until the day of judgment, to warn off all pilgrims coming to the mountain. But at last he grew tired of this, and ran away and became a monk at St. Gall, and he fell down an abyss and was killed, and he is sitting now beside a proud, pale woman, reading Virgil to her. And at midnight may be heard the words: 'If thou commandest, oh Queen, to renew the unspeakable sorrow.' 'And then she must kiss him, whether she will or not, for death makes up for the pleasures denied us in life.'"
He had uttered all this with a wild, wandering look in his face; and now his voice failed with low weeping. Dame Hadwig had stood immovably all this time. It was as if a gleam of pity were lighting up her cold eye, as she now bent down her head towards him.
"Ekkehard," said she, "you must not speak of death. This is madness. We both live, you and I!"
He did not stir. Then she lightly laid her hand on his burning forehead. This touch sent a wild thrill through his brains. He sprang up.
"You are right!" cried he. "We both live, you and I!"
A dizzy darkness clouded his eyes as he stepped forwards, and winding his arms round her proud form, he fiercely pressed her to his bosom, his kiss burning on her lip. Her resisting words died away, unheard.
Raising her high up towards the altar, as if she were an offering he was about to make, he cried out to the dark and solemn looking picture, "why dost thou hold out thy gold glittering fingers so quietly, instead of blessing us?"
The Duchess had started like a wounded deer. One moment, and all the passion of her hurt pride lent her strength, to push the frenzied man back, and to free herself at least partly from his embrace. He had still got one arm round her waist, when the church-door was suddenly opened, and a flaring streak of daylight broke through the darkness,--they were no longer alone.
Rudimann, the cellarer from the Reichenau, stepped over the threshold, whilst other figures became visible in the background of the courtyard.