Playfully drawing the ample folds of his habit together, so that the outlines of his tightly laced waist became visible, he assumed a complacent and expectant attitude. Praxedis stepped back, and stamped her foot on the blue cornflower.
"You are a bad, wicked man!" she cried turning her back on him.
Rudimann, who knew how to interprete physiognomy, clearly saw from the twitching of Praxedis's eyelids, and the angry frown on her forehead, that her chamber-door would be locked, now and ever, against all the cellarers in Christendom.
She went away. "Have you still any commands?" asked she, once more looking back.
"Yes, thou Greek wasp! A jug of vinegar if you please. I want to lay my rods in it; the writing is easier then, and will not fade away so soon. I have as yet never had the good fortune to flog an interpreter of Virgil. Such a scholar verily deserves particular attention."
Burkhard, the cloister-pupil, was still sitting under the linden-tree, sobbing. Praxedis, in passing gave him a kiss, chiefly to spite the cellarer. She went up to the Duchess, intending to implore her compassion for Ekkehard on her knees; but the door remained locked against her. Dame Hadwig was deeply hurt. If the monks of the Reichenau had not come in upon them, she might have pardoned Ekkehard's frenzy; all the more as she herself had sowed the seeds of all this,--but now it had become a public scandal, which demanded punishment. The fear of gossiping tongues, does influence many an action.
The Abbot had sent her the letter from St. Gall. "St. Benedict's rules," so the letter said, "exacted not only the outward forms of a monastic life, but the self-denial of heart and soul, which forms the spirit of it!" Ekkehard was to return. From Gunzo's libel, some parts were quoted against him.
It was all perfectly indifferent to the Duchess. What his fate would be, if delivered into the hands of his antagonists, she knew quite well. Yet she was determined to do nothing for him. Praxedis knocked at her door a second time, but again it was not opened.
"Oh thou poor moth," said she sadly.
Ekkehard meanwhile, lay in his dungeon like one who had dreamt some wild dream. Four bare walls surrounded him; some faint gleams of light falling in from above. Now and then, he shivered as with cold. By degrees a melancholy smile of resignation settled on his lips, but this did not always remain there; bursts of anger, which made him clench his fists, interrupted it.