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Updated: May 11, 2025
Michaelsburg, was a gentle, patient, pale-faced old man; his white hands were soft and smooth, and no one would have thought that they could have known the harsh touch of sword-hilt and lance. And yet, in the days of the Emperor Frederick the grandson of the great Red-beard no one stood higher in the prowess of arms than he.
Otto, in a quaint, simple way which belonged to him, was gentle and obedient to all. But there was one among the Brethren of St. Michaelsburg whom he loved far above all the rest Brother John, a poor half-witted fellow, of some twenty-five or thirty years of age.
"Hast been taught to ride a horse by the priests up yonder on Michaelsburg?" asked the Baron, when they had reached the level road. "Nay," said Otto; "we had no horse to ride, but only to bring in the harvest or the grapes from the further vineyards to the vintage."
"Methinks you are my father, sir," said Otto. "Aye, thou art right," said Baron Conrad, "and I am glad to see that these milk-churning monks have not allowed thee to forget me, and who thou art thyself." "An' it please you," said Otto, "no one churneth milk here but Brother Fritz; we be makers of wine and not makers of butter, at St. Michaelsburg."
Here was a terrible sight, but Otto saw nothing of it; his blue eyes were gazing far away, and his lips moved softly with the prayer that the good monks of St. Michaelsburg had taught him, for he thought that they meant to slay him. All around the court-yard the flames roared and snapped and crackled. Four or five figures lay scattered here and there, silent in all the glare and uproar.
When a very little child, he had fallen from his nurse's arms and hurt his head, and as he grew up into boyhood, and showed that his wits had been addled by his fall, his family knew not what else to do with him, and so sent him off to the Monastery of St. Michaelsburg, where he lived his simple, witless life upon a sort of sufferance, as though he were a tame, harmless animal.
"Urge me no further, I must return to-night; yet if thou hast a mind to do me a kindness thou canst give me some food to eat and a flask of your golden Michaelsburg; beyond these, I ask no further favor of any man, be he priest or layman."
The burghers of Herrmannstadt hereupon obliged the men of Heltau to sign a bond, saying that "they were but humble villagers," and promising to treat their haughty neighbours with all due "honour, fear, and friendship." From Heltau I went on to Michaelsburg, an extremely curious place. In the centre of a lovely valley rises a conical rock of gneiss, protruding to the height of 200 feet or more.
It was a sorely sick man that rode up the heights of St. Michaelsburg. His head hung upon his breast through the faintness of weariness and pain; for it was the Baron Conrad.
"Aye," said the Baron, grimly, "it is true enough, and I think me I have killed many more than one. But what of that, Otto? Thou must get out of those foolish notions that the old monks have taught thee. Here in the world it is different from what it is at St. Michaelsburg; here a man must either slay or be slain."
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