Ekkehard Volume I Part 5

Imagine, before this little window, there he often stands in lonely nights,--he, whom my heart has elected, the valiant Bishop Martin, and he holds out his lance and s.h.i.+eld, to protect me from the raging devils. An aureole of blue flames crowns his head, flas.h.i.+ng through the darkness like summer-lightning, and as soon as he appears the demons fly away shrieking. And when the battle is over, then he enters into friendly communion with me. I tell him all that weighs on my poor heart;--all the grief which my neighbours cause me, and the wrong which I suffer from the cloister-folk; and the Saint nods to me and shakes his curly head, and all that I tell him, he carries to heaven and repeats it to his friend the Archangel Michael, who keeps watch every Monday, before the throne of G.o.d Almighty. There it comes before the right ear, and Wiborad the last of the least is not forgotten...."

"Then I shall also choose St. Martin to become my patron-saint,"

exclaimed Praxedis. But this had not been the drift of Wiborad's praises. She threw a contemptuous half jealous look on the rosy cheeks of the young girl. "The Lord pardon thee, thy presumption!" cried she with folded hands "dost thou believe that this can be done with a flippant word and smooth face? Indeed! Many long years have I striven and fasted until my face became wrinkled and furrowed,--and he did not favour me even with one single look! He is a high and mighty Saint and a valiant soldier of the Lord, who only looks on long tried champions."

"He will not rudely shut his ears against my prayers," exclaimed Praxedis.

"But thou shalt not pray to him," cried Wiborad angrily. "What has he to do with thee? For such as thou art, there are other patron-saints. I will name thee one. Choose thou the pious Father Pachomius for thyself."

"Him, I don't know," said Praxedis.

"Bad enough, and it is high time for you to make his acquaintance. He was a venerable hermit who lived in the Theban desert, nouris.h.i.+ng himself with wild roots and locusts. He was so pious that he heard during his lifetime, the harmony of the spheres and planets and often said: 'If all human beings would hear, what has blessed my ears, they would forsake house and land; and he who had put on the right shoe, would leave the left one behind, and hasten hither.' Now in the town of Alexandria there was a maid, whose name was Thas, and n.o.body could tell, which was greater, her beauty or her frivolity. Then Pachomius said unto himself 'Such a woman is a plague for the whole Egyptian land,' and after cutting his beard and anointing himself he mounted a crocodile, which by prayer he had made subservient to himself, and on its scaly back was carried down the Nile; and then he went to Thas, as if he also were an admirer of hers. His big stick, which was a palmtree, he had taken with him, and he managed to shake the heart of the sinner so, as to make her burn her silken robes, as well as her jewels, and she followed Pachomius, as a lamb does the shepherd. Then he shut her up in a rocky grave, leaving only a tiny window in it; instructed her in prayer, and after five years her purification was completed, and four angels carried her soul up to heaven."

This story did not impress Praxedis very favourably.

"The old hermit with his rough beard and bitter lips is not good enough for her," she thought, "and therefore I am to take him for myself," but she did not dare to give utterance to these thoughts.

At this moment the curfew bell began to ring in the monastery, and at this signal the recluse stepped back into her chamber and closed her shutter. The hollow sound of psalm-chanting was heard again, accompanied by the noise of falling strokes. She was flagellating herself.

Meanwhile Romeias had begun his sport in the distant wood, and thrown his spear--but he had mistaken the trunk of a felled oak for a young deer. Angrily he pulled out his weapon from the tenacious wood;--it was the first time in his life, that such a thing had happened to him.

Before Wiborad's cell total silence reigned for a considerable length of time, and when her voice was again heard, it was quite altered; the tones being fuller and vibrating with pa.s.sion: "Come down unto me, holy Martin; valiant champion of G.o.d; thou consolation of my solitude; thou light in my darkness. Descend unto me, for my soul is ready to receive thee and my eyes are thirsting for thee."--

After this there ensued a pause, and then Praxedis started with terror.--A hollow shriek had come from within. She pushed open the shutter and looked in. The recluse was prostrated on her knees, her arms extended beseechingly, and her eyes had a fixed, stony expression.

Beside her lay the scourge.

"For G.o.d's sake," cried Praxedis, "what is the matter with you?"

Wiborad jumped up and pressed the hand, which the Greek maid extended to her, convulsively. "Child of Earth," said she in broken accents, "that has been deemed worthy to witness the agonies of Wiborad,--strike thy bosom; for a token has been given. He, the elected of my soul has not come; offended that his name has been profaned by unholy lips; but the holy Gallus has appeared to my soul's eye,--he who as yet has never deigned to visit my cell, and his countenance was that of a sufferer and his garments were torn, and half burnt. That means that his monastery is threatened by some great disaster. We must pray that his disciples may not stumble in the path of righteousness."

Bending her head out of the window she called out, "Sister Wendelgard!"

Then the shutter was opened on the opposite cell and an aged face appeared. The face belonged to good Dame Wendelgard, who in that fas.h.i.+on was mourning for her spouse, who had never returned from the last wars.

"Sister Wendelgard," said Wiborad, "let us sing three times 'Be merciful to us, oh Lord.'"

But the Sister Wendelgard had just been indulging in loving thoughts of her n.o.ble spouse. She still harboured an unalterable conviction, that some day he would return to her from the land of the Huns, and she would have liked best, there and then to leave her cell, to go and meet him.

"It is not the time for psalm-singing," she replied.

"So much the more acceptable, the voluntary devotion, rises up to Heaven," said Wiborad, after which she intoned the said psalm, with her rough unmelodious voice. But the expected response did not come. "Why dost thou not join me in singing David's song?"

"Because I don't wish to do so," was Sister Wendelgard's unceremonious reply. The fact was, that during the many years of her seclusion she had at last grown weary of it. Many thousand psalms had she sung at Wiborad's bidding, in order to induce St. Martin to deliver her husband, out of the hands of the infidels; but the sun rose and set daily--and yet he never came. And so she had begun to dislike her gaunt neighbour, with her visions and phantasms.

Wiborad however turned her eyes upwards, like one who thinks he can discover a comet in clear day-light. "Oh thou vessel, full of iniquity and wickedness!" she cried, "I will pray for thee, that the evil spirits may be banished from thee. Thine eye is blind as thy mind is dark."

But the other quietly replied: "Judge not, that thou be not judged. My eyes are as clear as they were a year ago, when in a moon-s.h.i.+ny night, they beheld you getting out of your window, and going away Heaven knows where;--and my mind still refuses to believe, that prayers coming from such a mouth can work miracles."

Then Wiborad's pale face became distorted, as if she had bitten a pebble. "Woe to thee, whom the Devil has deluded!" screamed she and a flood of scolding words streamed from her lips; but her neighbour knew well how to answer her with similar missiles.

Quicker and quicker the words came, confusing and mixing themselves together, whilst the rocky walls threw back unharmonious echoes, and frightened a pair of little owlets, which leaving their cranny nest flew away screeching ... in truth at the famous quarrel beneath the portal of the cathedral at Worms, when the two queens[4] were scolding and upbraiding each other, the volubility and anger exhibited were not to be compared to that of the pious recluses.

In mute astonishment Praxedis stood listening to the noise, secretly wis.h.i.+ng to interfere and make peace; but then a soft thing fares ill between two sharp ones.

But now the merry notes of a horn, intermingled with the loud barking of dogs was heard from the wood, and a moment later, the tall majestic figure of Romeias could be seen also, approaching slowly.

The second time that he had thrown the spear, it had not hit a tree, but a magnificent stag of ten antlers, which now hung over his shoulder; and besides this, he carried fastened to his belt, six hares which had been caught in snares.

On beholding the fight before him, the sportsman's heart rejoiced mightily. Without saying a word, he loosened two of the living hares, and swinging one in each hand, he threw them so dexterously into the narrow little windows, that Wiborad suddenly feeling the soft fur brus.h.i.+ng past her head, started back with a loud scream. The brave Sister Wendelgard likewise got a great shock, for her black habit had loosened itself in the heat of battle, and the wretched little hare, getting entangled therein, and trying to discover an outlet, caused her no small fright. So both stopped their scolding, closed the shutters, and there was silence again on Erin-hill.

"We'll go home," said Romeias to the Greek maid, "for it is getting late." Praxedis who was not over pleased, either by the quarrelling or Romeias' way of making peace, had no desire to stay any longer. Her companions had gone back some time ago, following their own inclinations.

"Hares must be of small value here, as you throw them away in such an unmannerly way," she said.

"True, they are not worth much," Romeias rejoined laughingly, "yet the present deserved thanks at least."

Whilst still speaking, the dormer-window of Wiborad's roof opened; about half of her gaunt lean figure became visible, and a stone of some weight, flew over Romeias head, without hitting him. That was her way of thanking him for the hare.

From this can be seen, that the forms of social intercourse differed somewhat from the present fas.h.i.+ons.

Praxedis expressed her astonishment.

"Oh, such things happen about once a week," explained Romeias. "A moderate overflow of gall, gives new strength to such old hags, and it is doing them a kindness, if one helps them to effect such a crisis."

"But she is a saint," said Praxedis shyly.

After first murmuring some unintelligible words in his beard, Romeias said: "Well, she ought to be thankful if she is one, and I am not going to tear off her garb of sanct.i.ty. But since I was at Constance on a visit to my mother, I have heard many a tale, that's not quite as it ought to be. It has not yet been forgotten in those parts, how she had to defend herself before the bishop on account of this and that which is none of my business; and the Constance merchants will tell you, without your asking them, that the recluses near the cathedral have lent them money, given to them by pious pilgrims, on usurious interest.

It was not my fault, that once, when I was still a boy, I found in a quarry a strange big pebble. When I knocked it to pieces with my hammer, there was a toad in the middle, looking very much astonished.

Since then I know what a recluse is like. Snip-snap--trari-trara!"

Romeias accompanied his new friend to the house which lay beyond the cloister-walls and which was destined to receive her. Before it, the other maids were standing, and the posy of wild flower's they had gathered lay on a stone table before the door.

"We must say Good-bye," said the gate-keeper.

"Farewell," said Praxedis.

He then went away, and after going thirty steps suddenly turned round,--but the sun does not rise twice in one day; least of all for the keeper of a cloister-gate! No hand was being kissed to him.

Praxedis had entered the house. Then Romeias slowly walked back, and without troubling himself to ask leave, hastily took up the flowers from the stone table, and went away. The stag and four hares he brought to the kitchen. After this he toiled up to his room in the watch-tower, fastened the nosegay to the wall with the help of a nail, and taking a piece of charcoal, drew a heart under it, which had two eyes, a long stroke in lieu of a nose, and a cross-line for a mouth.

He had just finished this, when the cloister-pupil Burkhard came up, bent upon amusing himself. Romeias seized him with a powerful grasp, held out the charcoal and placing him before the wall, said: "There, write the name under it!"

"What name?" asked the boy.

"Hers," commanded Romeias.

"What do I know about her, and her name," testily replied the pupil.

"There one can see again, what is the use of studying," grumbled Romeias. "Every day the boy sits for eight hours behind his a.s.ses'-skins and does not know the name of a strange damsel!" ...