But to continue the history of the first walking delegate, if you are interested.I am interested myself because I have seen his relics in Sackingen, and also the very spot where he worked his great miracle--the one which won him his sainthood in 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 of the human profile.By four the back of the head was good, the military cap was pretty good, the nose was bold and strong, the upper lip sharp, but not pretty, and there was a great goatee that shot straight aggressively forward from the chin.