the papal court a few centuries later. To have seen these things
makes me feel very near to him, almost like a member of the
family, in fact. While wandering about the Continent he arrived
at the spot on the Rhine which is now occupied by Sackingen, and
proposed to settle there, but the people warned him off. He
appealed to the king of the Franks, who made him a present of the
whole region, people and all. He built a great cloister there
for women and proceeded to teach in it and accumulate more land.
There were two wealthy brothers in the neighborhood, Urso and
Landulph. Urso died and Fridolin claimed his estates. Landulph
asked for documents and papers. Fridolin had none to show. He
said the bequest had been made to him by word of mouth. Landulph
suggested that he produce a witness and said it in a way which he
thought was very witty, very sarcastic. This shows that he did
not know the walking delegate. Fridolin was not disturbed.
He said:
“Appoint your court. I will bring a witness.”
The court thus created consisted of fifteen counts and
barons. A day was appointed for the trial of the case. On that
day the judges took their seats in state, and proclamation was
made that the court was ready for business. Five minutes, ten
minutes, fifteen minutes passed, and yet no Fridolin appeared.
Landulph rose, and was in the act of claiming judgment by default
when a strange clacking sound was heard coming up the stairs.
In another moment Fridolin entered at the door and came walking
in a deep hush down the middle aisle, with a tall skeleton
stalking in his rear.
Amazement and terror sat upon every countenance, for everybody
suspected that the skeleton was Urso’s. It stopped before the
chief judge and raised its bony arm aloft and began to speak,
while all the assembled shuddered, for they could see the
words leak out between its ribs. It said:
“Brother, why dost thou disturb my blessed rest and withhold
by robbery the gift which I gave thee for the honor of God?”
It seems a strange thing and most irregular, but the verdict
was actually given against Landulph on the testimony of this
wandering rack-heap of unidentified bones. In our day a skeleton
would not be allowed to testify at all, for a skeleton has no
moral responsibility, and its word could not be believed on oath,
and this was probably one of them. However, the incident is
valuable as preserving to us a curious sample of the quaint laws
of evidence of that remote time–a time so remote, so far back
toward the beginning of original idiocy, that the difference
between a bench of judges and a basket of vegetables was as yet
so slight that we may say with all confidence that it didn’t
really exist.
During several afternoons I have been engaged in an
interesting, maybe useful, piece of work–that is to say, I have
been trying to make the mighty Jungfrau earn her living–earn it
in a most humble sphere, but on a prodigious scale, on a
prodigious scale of necessity, for she couldn’t do anything in a
small way with her size and style. I have been trying to make
her do service on a stupendous dial and check off the hours as
they glide along her pallid face up there against the sky, and
tell the time of day to the populations lying within fifty miles
of her and to the people in the moon, if they have a good
telescope there.
Until late in the afternoon the Jungfrau’s aspect is that of
a spotless desert of snow set upon edge against the sky. But by
mid-afternoon some elevations which rise out of the western
border of the desert, whose presence you perhaps had not detected
or suspected up to that time, began to cast black shadows
eastward across the gleaming surface. At first there is only one
shadow; later there are two. Toward 4 P.M. the other day I was
gazing and worshiping as usual when I chanced to notice that
shadow No. 1 was beginning to take itself something of the shape