It is the same with the human mind as with the sea. Though the tempest may have blown over, the surge is yet stronger and more impetuous than before, and now and then, some mighty straggling wave dashes wildly up, frightening the seagulls away from the rocks.
But Ekkehard's heart was not yet broken. It was still too young for that. He began to reflect on his position. The view into the future was not very cheering. He well knew the rules of his order, and that the men from Reichenau were his enemies.
With big strides he paced up and down the narrow space. "Great God, whom we may invoke in the hour of affliction, how will this all end?"
He shut his eyes, and threw himself on the bundle of straw. Confused visions passed before his soul. Thus he saw with his inward eye, how they dragged him out in the early morning. The Abbot would be sitting on his high stone chair, with the hooked staff in his hand, in sign of his sitting in judgment, and then they would read out a long bill of complaints against him, ... all this in the same courtyard in which he had once sprung out of the sedan chair, with such a jubilant heart, and in which he had preached his sermon against the Huns, on that solemn Good-Friday,--and now they were all against him!
"What shall I do?" thought he. "With my hand on my heart, and my eyes raised towards Heaven, I shall say: 'Ekkehard is not guilty!' Then the judges will say, 'prove it!'" The big kettle is fetched; the fire lighted beneath, so that the water hisses and bubbles. Then, the Abbot draws off the golden ring from his finger. They push up the right sleeve of his habit, whilst solemn penitential psalms are chaunted around them. "I conjure thee, spirit of the water, that the Devil quit thee, and that thou serve the Lord, to make known the truth, like to the fiery furnace of the King of Babylon, when he had the three men thrown into it!"--Thus the Abbot would address the boiling water; and "dip in thy arm, and fetch the ring," says he to the accused....
"Just God, how will thy ordeal speak?" Wild doubts were besetting Ekkehard's soul. He believed in himself and his good cause, but his faith was less strong in the dreadful means, by which priestcraft and church-laws sought to arrive at God's decision.
In the library of his monastery there was a little book, bearing the title: "Against the inveterate error of the belief, that through fire, water or single combat, the truth of God's judgment could be revealed."
This book he had once read, and he remembered it well. It was to prove, that with these ordeals, which were an inheritance from the ancient Heathen time, it was as the excellent Godfrey of Strassburg has expressed it in later days, namely "that the best Christian, is as combustible as an old rag."
"And what, if no miracle is performed?"
His thoughts were inclined to dark and despondent doubts.--"With burnt arm, to be proclaimed guilty and to be flogged,--whilst she perhaps would stand on the balcony looking on, as if it were being done to an entire stranger.--Oh Lord of Heaven and Earth send down Thy lightning!"