"Tis a pity, for it is said, that, what we dream the first night in a new domicile comes true. Now confess, are you not a very awkward young man?" she continued after a short pause. "I?" asked Ekkehard greatly surprised. "As you hold constant intercourse with the poets, why did you not invent some graceful dream, and tell it me? Poetry and dreams,--'tis all the same, and it would have given me pleasure." "If such is your command," said Ekkehard, "I will do so the next time you ask me; even if I have dreamt nothing." Such conversations were entirely new and mystical for Ekkehard. "You still owe me your opinion of Virgil," said he. "Well," returned Dame Hadwig, "if I had been a queen in Roman lands, I do not know whether I should not have burnt the poem, and imposed eternal silence on the man ..." Ekkehard stared at her, full of amazement. "I am perfectly serious about it," continued she, "and do you wish to know why?--because he reviles the Gods of his country. I paid great attention, when you recited the speeches of Juno yesterday. That she, the wife of the chief of all the Gods, feels a rankling in her mind, because a Trojan shepherd boy, does not declare her to be the most beautiful,--and being powerless to call up a tempest at her will, to destroy a few miserable ships, must first bribe Aeolus by the offer of a nymph! And then Neptune, who calls himself the king of the seas, and allows strange winds to cause a tempest in his realms; and only notices this transgression, when it is well nigh over!--What is the upshot of all that?--I can tell you, that in a country whose Gods are thus abased and defamed, I should not like to wield the sceptre!" Ekkehard could not very readily find an answer. All the manuscripts of the ancients, were for him stable and immovable as the mountains; and he was content to read and admire, what lay before him and now such doubts! "Pardon me, gracious lady," he said, "we have not read very far as yet, and it is to be hoped, that the human beings of the Æneid will find greater favour in your eyes. Please to remember, that at the time when the Emperor Augustus, had his subjects counted, the light of the world began to dawn at Bethlehem. The legend says, that a ray of that light had also fallen on Virgil, which explains why the old Gods could not appear so great in his eyes." Dame Hadwig had spoken according to her first impression, but she did not intend to argue with her teacher. "Praxedis," said she in a jesting tone, "what may thy opinion be?" "My powers of thought are not so great," said the Greek maid. "Everything appeared to me to be so very natural; and that made me like it. And what has pleased me most, was that Mistress Juno gave Aeolus to one of her nymphs for a husband; for though he was somewhat elderly, he was after all, king of the winds, and she must certainly have been well provided for."