ntinued the administration of the duchy. "The
young widow," as Scheffel paints her, "was of royal disposition and
uncommon beauty. But she had a short nose, and the sweet mouth was
somewhat disdainfully puckered up, and her chin projected boldly so that
the dimple which becomes woman so sweetly, was not to be found with her.
And whose countenance is thus shaped, he bears with a sharp spirit a
hard heart in his bosom and his nature inclines to severity. Therefore
the duchess, in spite of the bright roses of her cheeks, inspired many a
one in her land with a strange terror." Scheffel describes her
steel-gray garment which flowed in light waves over the embroidered
sandals; this garment clung close to her body; over it was a black tunic
reaching down to the knee; in her girdle that encased her hips, shone a
precious beryl; a gold-thread embroidered net held her chestnut-brown
hair, yet carefully curled locks played around her bright forehead. The
boudoir, too, of the illustrious lady of the tenth century is minutely
described. On the marble table near the window stood a fantastically
formed, dark green vase of polished metal, in which burned a foreign
incense and whirled its fragrant white fumes up to the ceiling of the
room. The walls were hung with many colored, embroidered rugs.

On the whole, there is in the wide domain of literature scarcely
anywhere such a detailed and absolutely accurate picture of the state of
the culture and civilization of the tenth century as in this novel. The
description of the characters, Hadwig's chamberlain Spazzo, the abbots
and monks and warriors, the home industries, the vintage, the life of
all the classes of people, the cloisters, the festivals, the Hunnish
terror, the virtues and faults of the time, clerical purity and piety
and the little and great shortcomings of celibacy, the German Christmas
and Easter and Whitsuntide, the German soul (_Gemuf_), the patriarchal
relations between the imperial mistress of Otto's blood and her lowliest
maidservants pass before our eyes in a charming, ever-changing
kaleidoscopic procession. The young widow, in her lofty castle of the
Hohentwiel, whiling away her idle hours in the study of Virgil, with the
pure-hearted and scholarly monk Ekkehard, whom she invited from the
famed cloister of Saint Gall; Praxedis, the lovely chamber-woman of the
duchess, of Greek race, a living souvenir of the time when the son of
the Byzantine Emperor Basilius had wooed