“Ekkehard” is a novel derived very largely from mediæval records that are now little remembered. It attempts to reproduce for the modern reader the political and social conditions of the tenth century, and the story is accompanied with numerous notes and references, giving evidence of the careful researches of the author. It is to German scholarship, indeed, that one would naturally look for a work of this description, for although many novelists elsewhere use historical materials for certain parts of their works, there are few who would follow the records with such fidelity.
The scene opens at a castle on a lofty eminence near the lake of Constance. Hadwig, the young and not inconsolable widow of the old duke, resolves for diversion to go with her train to the monastery of St. Gallus on the other side of the lake. This visit, illustrating many of the details of monastic life, is graphically and attractively described. According to the rules of the order, no woman’s foot may pass over the threshold of the cloister, but as the duchess is the protectress of the convent, it is determined that she may be carried over, and the duty falls upon the young monk Ekkehard, whose flattering words win him such favorthat he is commanded to go to her castle of Hohentwiel to instruct her in Latin and read Virgil to her. The development of a very natural romance follows. Ekkehard is as innocent as a child, and for a long time his mistress vainly tries to awaken in him the passion that rises in her own heart. When a horde of barbarous Huns attacks her possessions, and the monks of Reichenau and St. Gallus betake themselves to the castle for defense, she gives him the sword of her late husband and bids him distinguish himself in the combat. The Huns are defeated, but Ekkehard has not signalized himself by any remarkable exploit. In a contest of story-telling, too, he fails to meet the expectations of his mistress, and when at last his own passion is fully aroused, it is too late. He seizes an inopportune moment to declare it. He is detected in the chapel in most unmonastic behavior, and Hadwig is inexorable. He is imprisoned, he escapes and flees to the regions of the higher Alps, where he dwells in a cave, and for his own consolation composes the “Waltharïlied,” a short epic, full of much slaughter, in which heads and hands and feet are hacked off, eyes put out, and other unappetizing feats of arms performed amid the lusty merriment even of those who suffer from these mutilations. This work is an actual reproduction of a poem of the time, but many will consider it a blemish in a romance with which it has little connection.
When the winter comes and the flocks on the mountains descend to the valleys, Ekkehard leaveshis hermitage, and passing, on his way to distant parts, the castle which had witnessed his discomfiture, he fastens his parchment to an arrow which he sends as a farewell greeting to his former mistress, whose resentment has softened and who receives it with tears.
There are many striking episodes in the book. The stern fury of the hermit Wiborad, immured in a living tomb near the monastery of St. Gallus; the encounter between the coarse cellarer, Rudiman, and Kerhildis, the chief serving-maid of the monastery of Reichenau; the delightful pastoral scenes between the two children Audifax and Hadumoth, bond-servants of the castle; the elaborate and learned lampoon written against Ekkehard by the monk Gunzo in revenge for catching him in a grammatical error; the realistic accounts of certain ridiculous superstitions; the lifelike description of the preparations for a German Christmas—these things give the book a deservedly high rank as a faithful reproduction of the customs of the time. Von Scheffel has invested mediæval monasticism with a fine poetic grace and charm. But it is seldom that a story which is used largely as a means of conveying historical information concerning a remote period is as vivid in the delineation of character as one where the scene is laid amid the immediate surroundings of the writer, and it can not be said that the two chief figures of the novel, Hadwig and Ekkehard, are at all impressive as portraits of actual life.