In the Schillingscourt

Se llamaba la casa Schilling y había sido construida por un monje Benedictino, dando alojamiento a viajeros y sus familias en sus habitaciones lujosas. De la novela In the Schillingscourt, de E. Marlitt…

" SCHILLINGSCOURT " was the name of that grand old house near the Benedictine Church, but it always had heen, and continued to be, designated as the " Column House," notwithstanding modern times had adorned whole street fronts with great and small " columns' thus robbing the house of its distinguishing peculiarity.

It had been built by a Benedictine monk. In those days before harboring strangers had become a municipal business travelers found shelter within the hospitable gates of cloisters and knightly castles along their way. Some monastic orders erected especial accommodations upon their property for this purpose, and thus the Column House originated.

It had been a very wealthy monastic society, and Brother Ambrosius, the architect and sculptor, had come from Italy, enraptured with the beautiful plans that were to become a monument to his genius as a lodgment suitable to the rank of the princely personages who were in the habit of knocking at the cloister gates when traveling through this part of the country with family and retinue.

This is how there happened to distinguish up beside the  homely gable house occupied by the monks this most elegant facade, with its broad-columned hallway, that supported a second story, with great bow-windows and arched cornices and consoles that were beautifully carved...

The nineteenth century can guess but little of the experiences of this foreigner on German ground during those depressed times. The monastery then stood upon a common, along the roadway of which only a few mud huts were scattered, whose inhabitants scarcely ventured to peer out of their wooden window- shutters at night when they heard tramping of horses and imperious voices in the vicinity of the cloister.

The red light of glaring torches rising above the high walls, the infernal noise of barking and baying dogs, and swearing troopers, with their neighing, stamping steeds, seemed like a scene from Hades ; but it was hushed as suddenly as an outburst of hobgoblin frenzy, and the hunters crept enviously back to their beds. They knew that delicious wines flowed night and day within those now dark walls for those fine ladies and, gentlemen…

Later at the end of the Reformation the monks migrated. The Column House and the greater portion of Avood, field, and meadow-land became the property of the Schillings, and the rest, the monastery inclusive, with its outbuildings, passed into the possession of cloth- weaver Wolfram. The Schillings took down the wall fronting the street and transferred it to the dividing line between their own and the Wolfram ground ; for such a thing as neighborly intercourse was not to be thought of at that time. The clay huts disappeared ; the busy spirit of the city burst its limiting walls, and new streets led into fields like grasping claws, and before the expiration of another century the Column House lay in the center of a fine, well-populated city quarter, like some rare lady-bug webbed in the net of an active spider…  (Translated from the German by Emily R. Steinestel. In the Schillingscourt, de E. Marlitt, capítulo 1)

Vocabulario

Loom  yelping 

Neighing: relinchos

Hobgoblin: duende

Hades: dios griego del submundo

Artículo relacionado

Los Wolfram

De la web

In the Schillingscourt, para leer esta obra alemana en internet (archive.org)