with a countenance pale with fear, to tell him that the rats had devoured all the corn in his granaries. And presently there came another servant, to inform him that a legion of rats was on its way to his palace. The Bishop looked from his window, and saw the road and fields dark with the moving multitude; neither hedge nor wall impeded their progress, as they made straight for his mansion. Then, full of terror, the prelate fled by his postern, and, taking a boat, was rowed out to his tower in the river, All the gates secure and hard. “He laid him down, and closed his eyes; He started, and saw two eyes of flame. "He listen'd and look'd-it was only the cat ; "For they have swum over the river so deep, "Down on his knees the Bishop fell, And faster and faster his beads did tell, The saw of their teeth without he could hear. G g "And in at the windows, and in at the door, And through the walls by thousands they pour, "They have whetted their teeth against the stones, They gnaw'd the flesh from every limb, For they were sent to do judgment on him." It is satisfactory to know that popular fiction has maligned poor Bishop Hatto, who was not by any means a hard-hearted and wicked prelate. Wolfius', who tells the story on the authority of Honorius Augustodunensis (d. 1152), Marianus Scotus (d. 1086), and Grithemius (d. 1516), accompanying it with the curious picture which is reproduced on the opposite page, says, "This is regarded by many as a fable, yet the tower, taking its name from the mice, exists to this day in the river Rhine." But this is no evidence, as there is documentary proof that the tower was erected as a station for collecting tolls on the vessels which passed up and down the river. The same story is told of other persons and places. Indeed, Wolfius reproduces his picture of 1 Wolfii Lect. Memorab. Centenarii xvi. Lavingæ, 1600, tom. i. p. 343. M.meda Hatto in the mouse-tower, to do service as an illustration of the dreadful death of Widerolf, Bishop of Strasburg (997), who, in the seventeenth year of his episcopate, on July 17th, in punishment for having suppressed the convent of Seltzen on the Rhine, was attacked and devoured by mice or rats'. The same fate is also attributed to Bishop Adolf of Cologne, who died in 11123. The story comes to us from Switzerland. A Freiherr von Güttingen possessed three castles between Constance and Arbon, in the Canton of Thurgau, namely, Güttingen, Moosburg, and Oberburg. During a famine, he collected the poor of his territory into a great barn, and there consumed them, mocking their cries by exclamations of "Hark! how the rats and mice are squeaking." Shortly after, he was attacked by an army of mice, and fled to his castle of Güttingen in the waters of the Lake of Constance; but the vermin pursued him to his retreat, and devoured him. The castle then sank into the lake, and its ruins are distin 2 Id. tom. i. p. 270. See also Königshofen's Chronik. Königshofen was priest of Strasbourg (b. 1360, d. 1420). His German Chronicle contains the story of Bishop Widerolf and the mice. 3 San-Marte, Germania, viii. 77. |