But at the moment when they were about to seize her, at the foot of a mountain where there seemed no issue, the rock parted suddenly and received her. A few minutes later it again opened and Odile appeared enveloped in a supernatural light, declaring to her awestruck pursuers that she belonged forever to Christ alone. Then Atalric and the Austrasian lord turned silently and left the spot. The dove had conquered the lion. The legend has transformed her father’s momentary conversion to her will into the physical image of the suddenly sundered rock. But in the end it is all the same, for Odile, _Vierge Candide et Forte_, represents forever the victory of the transfigured soul over brute force, the incalculable power of faith sealed by sacrifice, the saving breath of the invisible world breathed into the visible. During centuries the great Benedictine Convent of Mount Saint-Odile (Odilienberg) performed its works of faith and mansuetude in that barbarian and ruthless world; the voices of Taran, the God of War, and of Rosmertha, the Goddess of Life and Love, according to the pagan ways, were replaced by another, promising eternal felicities to those born again in Christ. From a wall of _grès rose_, this same _grès rose_ that I have found as building-stone for temple and home and fountain all over Alsace, Odile, needing one day to give instant refreshment to an old man spent with fatigue, caused the spring of crystal water to gush forth from which pilgrims still drink. And in the Chapel, called that of Tears, is a deeply indented stone, worn, it is said, by the knees of the saint as she knelt there praying for the release of the soul of her father (long dead and unpenitent) from the pains of purgatory. The legend has it that only toward the end of her life was she able to accomplish this, when at last the chalice of blood the angel once gave her was transmuted into an elixir of eternal life. The redemption of the soul of Atalric signifies, too, the conversion of the Merovingian world to Christianity, and to a new will to give up life that it might be found again—and many other things that it is difficult to tell of in words, but the soul can perceive them. And on the Odilienberg has beat for centuries the very heart, as it were, of Alsace; above its throb being laid, passionately, now a hand from the West, now one from the East.... To this day, they who at evening ascend its heights and wander under the lindens of the terrace built above the old pagan wall, looking out upon the splendid panorama of the Vosges, breathe the mystical fragrance of the lily and the rose that perfumed the last sigh of Saint-Odile. These things I am not able to know of myself, for the Odilienberg is still in German hands. IX THE “FIELD OF LIES” AND LAIMBACH _Faro come colui che piange._—DANTE