The whole story of Prince Hohenlohe's sudden blaze into fame, and speedy extinction, is both curious and instructive. In the Baden village of Wittighausen, at the beginning of this century, lived a peasant named Martin Michel, owning a farm, and in fairly prosperous circumstances. His age, according to one authority, was fifty, according to another sixty-seven, when he became acquainted with Prince Hohenlohe. This peasant was unquestionably a devout, guileless man. He had been afflicted in youth with a rupture, but, in answer to continuous and earnest prayer, he asserted that he had been completely healed. Then, for some while he prayed over other afflicted persons, and it was rumoured that he had effected several miraculous cures. He emphatically and earnestly repudiated every claim to superior sanctity. The cures, he declared, depended on the faith of the patient, and on the power of the Almighty. The most solemn promises had been made in the gospel to those who asked in faith, and all he did was to act upon these evangelical promises. The Government speedily interfered, and Michel was forbidden by the police to work any more miracles by prayer or faith, or any other means except the recognised pharmacopoeia. He had received no payment for his cures in money or in kind, but he took occasion through them to impress on his patients the duty of prayer, and the efficacy of faith. By some means he met Prince Alexander Hohenlohe, and the prince was interested and excited by what he heard, and by the apparent sincerity of the man. A few days later the prince was in Würzburg, where he called on the Princess Mathilde Schwarzenberg, a young girl of seventeen who was a cripple, and who had already spent a year and a half at Würzburg, under the hands of the orthopædic physician Heine, and the surgeon Textor. She had been to the best medical men in Vienna and Paris, and the case had been given up as hopeless. Then Prince Schwarzenberg placed her under the treatment of Heine. She was so contracted, with her knees drawn up to her body, that she could neither stand nor walk. Prince Hohenlohe first met her at dinner, on June 18, 1821, and the sight of her distortion filled him with pity. He thought over her case, and communicated with Michel, who at his summons came to Würzburg. As Würzburg is in Bavaria, the orders of the Baden Government did not extend to it, and the peasant might freely conduct his experiments there.