Such a retreat was the convent of Allerheiligen. It was founded for Premonstratensian monks at the close of the twelfth century by Uta, duchess of Schawenburg, who concludes the deed of foundation, which still exists, with these words: "And if anybody shall do anything in any respect contrary to these statutes, he will for ever be subject to the vengeance of God and of all saints." Poor Duchess Uta! Could her spirit walk in this valley, as lovely now as when she gave it to her monks, and look upon the ruins of the pile she raised, she would think that the vengeance of God and all saints had been incurred to a considerable extent by somebody. The waterfalls--seven of them in succession--made by the little stream that waters the valley immediately after it has passed through the isolated bit of flat meadow-land on which the convent was built, continue to sing their unceasing song as melodiously as when the duchess Uta visited the spot and marked it out for the "Gottes Haus" she was minded to plant there. Her husband, the duke Welf, who had married her when she was a well-dowered widow, had been a very bad husband, which naturally tended to lead his neglected lady wife's mind in the direction of founding religious houses. He was duke of Altorf and Spoleto, the one possession lying on the shores of the Lake of Lucerne, and the other among the ilex-woods that overlook the valley of the Tiber--a strange conjunction of titles, which is in itself illustrative of the shape European history took in that day, and of the preponderating part which Germany played in Italy and among the rulers of its soil. Being thus duke of Spoleto, Welf resided much in Italy, but does not seem to have found it necessary to take his German wife with him to those milder skies and easier social moralities. Uta stayed at home amid the dark-green valleys of her native Black Forest, and planned cloister-building. Before the chart, however, which was to give birth to Allerheiligen was signed, Duke Welf came home, and having had, it would seem, his fling to a very considerable extent, had reached by a natural process that time of life and that frame of mind which inclined him to join in his long-neglected wife's pietistic schemes. So they planned and drew up the statutes together, and the convent was founded and built, a son of Uta by her first husband being, as is recorded, the first prior. [Illustration: RUINS OF THE ABBEY OF ALLERHEILIGEN.]