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

s 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,

"He laid him down, and closed his eyes;

But soon a scream made him arise.

He started, and saw two eyes of flame

On his pillow, from whence the screaming came.

"He listen'd and look'd-it was only the cat ;
But the Bishop he grew more fearful for that,
For she sat screaming, mad with fear,
At the army of rats that were drawing near.

"For they have swum over the river so deep,
And they have climb'd the shores so steep,
And now by thousands up they crawl
To the holes and windows in the wall.

"Down on his knees the Bishop fell,

And faster and faster his beads did tell,
As louder and louder, drawing near,

The saw of their teeth without he could hear.

G g

"And in at the windows, and in at the door,

66

And through the walls by thousands they pour,
And down from the ceiling, and up through the floor,
From the right and the left, from behind and before,
From within and without, from above and below,
And all at once to the Bishop they go.

They have whetted their teeth against the stones,
And now they pick the Bishop's bones;

They gnaw'd the flesh from every limb,

For they were sent to do judgment on him."

Wol

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. fius', 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.

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 theRhine, was attacked and devoured by mice or rats 2. 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.