"I see that--but who were you originally--who were your parents?"
Donatus looked calmly at him--"I do not know."
The Count cast a glance of hatred at the Abbot, "Oh, you priests, you priests; who ever got behind your tricks?"
"Pray be easy, Count Reichenberg," said the Duke soothingly. "I did not come here to torment peaceable monks who entertain us hospitably.--Do not take this to heart, my lord Abbot--nor you reverend brethren!" he signed to a servant who was standing by a large chest in a corner.
"Look here, I have something to show you!" He opened, the coffer, which the man carried with difficulty, and took out of it a magnificent chalice of pure gold encrusted with garnets and chased with artistic reliefs representing the Pa.s.sion, a work so fine and costly that the monks had never seen the like.
"Look here, this is the work of master Berthold, the goldsmith of Ulm,"
said the Duke.
Then he took out a little golden tube with a mouth-piece of amber, such as were in use at that time, in order that, when the Cup was presented, clumsy or greedy partakers might not imbibe too much of the costly wine. Next he produced a heavy golden Paten; this was in the same way set with garnets round the edge, and had two finely chased handles, while on the ground of the dish a cross was engraved. This he set on the table by the side of the Cup that all the brethren might rejoice in the sight. Finally he brought out a dozen of pure silver apples of artistic pierced work and called Calefactories; these were hand-warmers for the monks. They were filled with glowing charcoal and held in the hands to prevent the monks" fingers from being frozen at the early ma.s.s in winter.
"Well! how do you like them?" asked the lordly donor, well pleased at the astonishment and admiration with which the monks gazed at the costly treasure. "Do you think they will pay you for our dinner?" The Abbot looked at him enquiringly.
"I do not understand you, my lord!"
"No?--that is my offering in return for your hospitality. You shall have cause to remember the day when you entertained your Duke under your roof."
The brethren, with the exception of Correntian and Donatus, sprang up with confused cries of delighted surprise, "Oh! can it be!" and, "It is too much!" and the Abbot said with moistened eyes,
"You are magnificent in your favours, my Lord, and may G.o.d reward you, for we are only poor monks and can make you no return but by blessings and prayers."
"That is all I ask," said Duke Meinhard laughing, "only pray for me stoutly--I am sure to want it, for I hope to commit many more sins, and I shall have great need of the intercession of pious folks with the Almighty." He threw the treasure back into the heavy chest and slammed down the lid.
"There!" he exclaimed, "now take all the property away into your treasury and let us have dinner brought in as soon as possible, for we must proceed to-day to Munster and pa.s.s the night there. The d.u.c.h.ess wishes to spend some time in the convent of St. Gertrude, while we men ride to market and hunt in the neighbourhood."
"If it please, your lordship, to wait until we have shown her highness your wife the extent and arrangement of the monastery as she wishes--" suggested the Abbot.
"Aye--pray do so, my lord Duke," urged Wyso anxiously. "It will be to the advantage of your teeth if you leave the fat sheep, which were running about only an hour ago to sweat a little longer in front of the fire."
Reichenberg looked sharply at the fat monk with his thick lips and sensual grin. "You are not the man to die for the sake of keeping a vow," thought he. "When you have well drunk you will make a clean breast of it."
"Very well," said the Duke. "Then we will wait--less for the sake of my teeth than of yours, old gentleman--if indeed you still have any left.
You will grant a dispensation this day in our honour, my Lord Abbot, will you not?"
"I will do so, my Lord," said the Abbot smiling, "they may enjoy themselves to their heart"s content. And so, Donatus, my son, come now with me that I may conduct you to her ladyship, the d.u.c.h.ess, if she will accept you as her guide."
Donatus rose with simple dignity, and followed the Abbot. The two gentlemen, Meinhard and Reichenberg, looked after him in silence.
"Tell me, Count, what pa.s.sed between you and the youngster that you got so angry about it?" asked the Duke, pushing back a little way from the table that the others might not overhear them.
"It is a mere whim, if you will," replied Reichenberg in a low voice.
"But the boy"s resemblance to me struck me amazingly. I--I might have had a child who would have been of just his age, and if it had been a son he might have looked exactly like that, for not only is the lad like me, he has just my wife"s eyes and soft voice."
"Your wife"s?" said the Duke, and he shook his head.
"My first wife"s," said the Count, "whom I repudiated just about the time when my first child would have been born. You were then only a boy, and you were not at the court of your grandfather Albert. My wife was a Ramuss, and hardly were we married when that venomous serpent, the Countess of Eppan, poisoned my ear and heart. Not till last year, when the wretched woman was on her deathbed and sent to me in her last agony, did she confess that she had accused my wife falsely, in order to obtain her place. The name and wealth of the Reichenberg family were an eyesore to her, for she was both poor and haughty; the castle of Reichenberg, as you know, formerly belonged to the house of Eppan. She longed to restore it to them by a marriage with me--her heart was never mine as I saw very plainly later on. Now for a year past I have been wandering about the world, seeking in vain for some trace of my outcast wife. G.o.d in Heaven alone knows what may have become of them both, mother and child; my race ends with me, and I myself have driven out the heir that G.o.d perhaps had granted me--an outcast--to die! And that boy"s eyes struck me like a thunderbolt. He looked just as my wife looked when I drove her away. Duke, if it were he--" The Count was silent, and his lips quivered.
"What good would it do you? It would be too late; he has taken the vows, and you could not break them."
The Count looked darkly before him, and made no reply.
"Your second wife never had much joy of her treason; you repudiated her too if I remember rightly?"
"Yes; at the end of two years the Pope gave me permission to announce that my first wife was dead, and to marry again; my mind had already wandered from the Lady of Eppan, but I had to keep my word--she held me to it hard and fast--and so she became my wife; but I was always away from home in battle and danger, for the world was spoilt for me, and so was all my liking for that false woman. When I returned from my four years" expedition to the Holy Land I found her carrying on an intrigue with Master Friedrich von Sunburc, the minnesinger and chronicler of your father"s court. Nay more, a faithful waiting-woman of my first wife who could never get over the loss of her former mistress, betrayed to me that the shameless woman had not long since had a daughter, and had concealed the child with a strange beggar-woman whom she had met gathering berries and simples in the woods; as soon as the news of my return was known, the woman and the child had disappeared, leaving no trace behind. How I punished her, how the minnesinger was expelled from the court by Meinhard the first, and how she died, abandoned to remorse in her own ruined castle, all that you know."
"She was an intriguing coquette," said the Duke shaking his head, "and ensnared all men with her gold-gleaming owl"s eyes and her auburn hair.
She had something of the witch about her, and I could almost believe that she was one, for you know the common people say that you can tell a witch not by her feet only, but by her eye-brows that meet above her nose; she had such eye-brows you may remember?"
"I do not believe in such things," said Reichenberg sulkily.
"Nor I either," said the Duke laughing. "But there was something not quite canny about her, say what you will."
The Abbot meanwhile had taken Donatus to the d.u.c.h.ess.
"May it please you, n.o.ble Lady," said he, "that this youth, my favourite disciple, should have the honour of guiding you in your walk round the convent."
The d.u.c.h.ess glanced at Donatus with condescending kindness, and the court-ladies exchanged meaning glances, "That is the one we saw just now." Donatus stood in the door-way with downcast eyes.
"Come then," said the d.u.c.h.ess rising. "Two of you accompany me; you, Emerita, and you, Countess Hildegard."
The two chosen ones sprang forward with pleasure; one of them, Hildegard, was the beauty who had previously pulled up her horse in her admiration of Donatus" fine figure. She wore a light blue upper-garment or cappa of a fine and almost transparent woollen stuff, and under it a dress of heavy yellow silk rich with gold and bordered with white fur.
She had laid aside her broad hat, and her very light hair was bound with a golden circlet, and crowned with fresh Alpine roses that she had gathered on the way. Her handsome dress hung round her slender form in soft folds, and was gathered in round her waist by a girdle of red velvet embroidered with gold. She was fair to see, that haughty maiden!
Her brow was as white as marble, and the roses in her cheeks were heightened by a faint touch of the finest Florentine rouge. Her flashing eyes seemed to ask: "Where is there one fairer than I?"
Nothing was to be got out of the simple G.o.d-fearing monks in the cloister, which she now must explore with the d.u.c.h.ess, nothing but looks of disapprobation of such worldly court-fashions, and if she could not ere long produce some sort of sensation, she felt she must die of tedium.
The other, Emerita, the d.u.c.h.ess" favourite, was dressed no less splendidly though less elaborately; her hair was modestly fastened up in a fine net of silver-threads tied with white, and a black velvet cap embroidered with pearls; her robes of soft white silk and woollen stuff were bordered with dark fur, and fell heavily and simply to her feet.
The d.u.c.h.ess herself was the most plainly dressed of all; deeply veiled in matronly fashion, and enveloped from her shoulders in the broad folds of a brown silk mantle fastened over her bosom with a single gold clasp; the rest of her dress consisted entirely of grey woollen stuff.
These three figures--so unlike each other--followed their monkish guide through the cold, damp, musty corridors of the vast building.
He led them first to the library; the d.u.c.h.ess found here a rich harvest for her craving for pious learning, for sacred books and parchments of inestimable value and splendour were ama.s.sed in it, and she was soon greedily absorbed in these treasures. Hildegard was almost in despair.
The dust of books and rouge! these have little in common! And no one by but the coy saint with a head like a heathen G.o.d, as fine as any to be seen in Rome--living, breathing, and yet of marble! A secret revulsion to spite and hatred sprang up in her soul. Tedium is the parent of all kinds of crime. But to her great joy just then it occurred to the Duke to accompany the d.u.c.h.ess on her tour round the convent, and, conducted by the Abbot, he at this instance entered the library.
"Well, Countess Hildegard, how do you like yourself here?" said he, laughing and threatening her with his finger. "How fine you are! Come, come, do not be bewitching the poor young monk with your charms."
"Do not be alarmed, my Lord," said Hildegard mockingly, "he has not vouchsafed us a single glance; I believe his eyes have grown fixed to the ground."
The Duke looked at her with a smile. "That is a sad grievance for you, is it not, Hildegard? If it is but a monk he ought to admire you."
Hildegard coloured and was silent; but the Duke, good-humouredly carrying on the joke, said to Donatus, "Tell me, pious brother, why do you keep your eyes so immoveably fixed on the ground; are our fair maids of honour not worthy to be looked at?"
Donatus was standing before the d.u.c.h.ess, holding a heavy folio which she was turning over. "It does not become a servant of G.o.d to gaze at anything but the earth, which will be his grave, or Heaven, which is his hope," he replied with serene gravity.
The d.u.c.h.ess looked at his guileless countenance, and deep compa.s.sion filled her soul, she knew not wherefore. She could have loved this youth as a son.